The Vintage and the Gleaning

by Jeremy Chambers

  Got to keep the university graduates happy, says one of the men. Got to keep them in beer and skittles.

  That’s right, says Boss and the men all nod.

  At Spit’s place there are cars up the drive and along the kerb. The door is open and a woman with a baby stands outside. The baby is crying and she is holding it to her, rocking it, talking to it quietly. The planes drum in the distance.

  Belle around? I ask the woman.

  The woman nods towards the door, still rocking the baby. I don’t know her.

  I go inside the house and into the living room. It is full of women and babies and toddlers running about. The room smells of talcum powder and nappies and milk. The women are all talking but they stop when they see me. The toddlers keep playing, piping away. The women look at me.

  Belle is in the kitchen standing over cups on the counter, putting in tea bags. The electric kettle begins to boil. The women in the lounge room start talking again but in low voices and whispers.

  I forgot he was the grandfather, I hear someone murmur.

  Belle stops and listens to them but doesn’t say anything.

  I thought I’d come and check on you, I say to Belle. Make sure you were all right getting out of town.

  Belle spoons sugar into the cups. Her back is turned to me.

  We’re car-pooling, she says. All the single mothers. And me, seeing I don’t seem to have a husband at the moment.

  You can still hear the plane engines in the distance. Belle is dressed in jeans and a blouse and sneakers.

  Where are you going? I ask.

  Melbourne, says Belle. Me and the kids are staying with my Aunty Prue.

  She reaches up to a high shelf, grunting, and takes down an enamelled tray. She puts the cups on it.

  How long you going for? I ask.

  Just the night, Belle says. We’ll be back tomorrow afternoon.

  That’s not much of a trip, I say. You should spend some time down there while you’ve got the chance. Take the kids to the zoo or something.

  The kettle boils and clicks off. Belle pours water into the cups. The drone of the planes grows louder.

  Some of the other girls work, she says.

  Still, I say.

  A plane passes over the town. Glasses tinkle. Belle looks up.

  Well, I know where Spit is, if that’s any consolation, I say. Or who he’s with, anyway.

  Belle snorts.

  Everyone knows that, she says.

  Do they?

  Belle pushes past me to get the milk out of the fridge, saying something under her breath.

  What’s that? I say.

  Belle has her back to me again, pouring milk into the cups. She shrugs and mutters again.

  Getting himself into strife just because bloody Brett Clayton’s pissed off with the world, she says.

  How do you mean? I say.

  I watch her with the tea.

  You need any help there? I ask.

  Belle shakes her head and puts the milk back in the fridge.

  It’s not my problem, she says. As if me and Spit didn’t have enough on our plate without Brett Clayton getting involved.

  Belle takes the tea bags out of the cups and puts them onto a plate. A plane comes over again and she swears.

  So everyone knows, I say.

  Pretty much, says Belle.

  She picks up the tray and then puts it back down on the bench again. She counts the cups.

  So what are they saying? I ask.

  Belle looks into the lounge room and she looks at me.

  Don’t worry about it, she says.

  Let me give you a hand with that, I say.

  I’m right, Belle says. She picks up the tray again and starts to leave.

  Well, what about you? I say.

  What does that matter, says Belle. You’re old enough to think for yourself.

  Well you seem to have something to say.

  Belle shifts the tray against her chest and the cups slide and clatter against one another. Tea spills over the edges. Planes roar overhead.

  She’s using you, Belle says.

  Yeah? I say.

  Belle starts to push past me. I stay standing where I am.

  Why do you say that? I ask.

  Because I know her, says Belle. I know what she’s like.

  Leaving the house I see Spit and Belle’s older boy on the footpath, sitting on his plastic tricycle. He is looking up at the sky.

  What you doing all the way out here, then? I ask him. Ay?

  The boy points up.

  Plane! he says.

  That’s right, I say. It is a plane isn’t it.

  He looks at me, still pointing up.

  There! There! he says. Plane!

  I can see it, I say.

  He smiles and looks up at the sky and back at me. His eyes are opened up wide.

  How about we get you back inside, I say. We don’t want you getting run over, do we?

  I start to pull the tricycle towards the door but he drags his feet on the footpath and starts to moan.

  It’s all right, I say. You know who I am, don’t you? I’m your grandpa. You know how to say that? Grandpa?

  The boy looks at me.

  Grandpa, I say. Pointing to myself.

  The boy looks at me, his brow furrowed as though he is in pain. Then he points at me.

  Smithy! he says.

  That’s right, I say. Your grandpa Smithy.

  I try to move the tricycle again but the boy starts to cry.

  No, he wails. No. Plane.

  Well how about I take you round the back, I say. You can see the planes just as well from there.

  The boy looks up at the sky, sniffing. He starts to cry again and then stops, watching the sky.

  I point towards the back.

  You can see the planes from there too, I say.

  He looks at me and then seems to understand and begins walking the tricycle into the front yard. I take hold of the handles and help him along. He lifts his feet and I pull him around the back.

  The lawn is overgrown, the grass well above my boots. Spent dandelions tower, thick-stemmed and taller than the boy. Dead brown fingers of ivy cling to the hardwood fence and wandering jew runs under the shed and in the far corners of the garden, thick in shaded places.

  You wait here a minute, I say to the boy. I break a stick off a tree and walk through the grass, banging it on the ground and looking for the movement of snakes. There is a shovel lying flat and hidden in the grass, its dry shaft cracked, a plastic watering can and toys. I pull the boy out on his tricycle and point upwards.

  See, you can look for the planes from here, I say.

  I squat down on my heels, next to the boy. The boy is studying the sky. I take my clasp knife from my belt and start stripping the bark off the stick. We wait there.

  The sun is hot and there is no breeze. The noise of the planes continues. The boy is intent on the sky, but now and then he looks over at me and points upwards and smiles, like the planes are some secret between us, something only the two of us know about or understand. I finish cutting the bark off the stick and I give it to the boy to play with. He looks at it and looks back up at the sky without taking it. I throw it away.

  The boy starts to make excited noises. He looks at me, his eyes quick and wide, pointing and breathing fast. We watch as the plane comes into view.

  Yeah, you like those planes, don’t you? I say. Maybe you want to learn how to fly them one day. How you like that, ay? Flying people around the world. Seeing all sorts of places. That’d be an all right job now, wouldn’t it?

  The boy keeps his arm up, pointing as the plane moves slowly across the sky. His arm still raised, he rests his head against his shoulder and closes his eyes.

  Going home the streets are empty, the shops closed up, locked up, people gone or in their houses, a feeling of the town deserted.

  I check the windows and put a rolled-up towel against the front door. The planes are going out further
now, over paddocks and vineyards, a dull, constant hum. Charlotte has showered and brushed her hair and sits there rosy. She is drinking a cup of coffee.

  I sit down opposite her.

  I saw your father in town, I say.

  What? says Charlotte, looking up at me. No, my father doesn’t go into town, he never goes into town.

  Well, he was there today, I say. Plenty of farmers were. All the winemakers too.

  Charlotte puts her hand over her brow and looks at the floor.

  Christ, my father in town, she says. Why on earth?

  She looks back up at me, her eyes alive.

  But what if he ran into Brett? she says. It would be a disaster. I mean, with Brett acting like he is. And my father in town. I cannot believe this.

  You didn’t see Brett did you? she asks me. Please tell me you didn’t see Brett.

  No, I say. Didn’t see him at all. Was in one of the pubs most likely.

  Charlotte groans, sits bent over, covers her face.

  I can’t believe this. Why now? Why does my father decide to come into town now? I mean, what if he ran into Brett? As if things weren’t bad enough. But are you sure? she asks me. Because my father never goes into town. Why pick today of all days? My God.

  My God, says Charlotte. I cannot believe this.

  We sit for a while. I watch a wolf-spider hop across the windowpane. There are no birds about today, not even crows, nothing. Charlotte sits up, leans back and looks at me.

  You know, it’s almost funny, she says. I mean, the timing is so bad it’s almost funny. Perfect. Why shouldn’t he see Brett now? Why not? I suppose my father couldn’t think any worse of Brett, or me, so why not see him now. You know, he probably wouldn’t even be surprised if he ran into him. It’s what he expects, isn’t it? Exactly what he expects. It’s what he’s always thought.

  One of the planes comes into view through the back window, a white shining dot. I watch it move across the sky.

  You know, says Charlotte, and I know this for a fact, but my father, well, both my parents, you know they drive all the way into Corowa rather than come into town, for shopping or whatever, petrol. Even just to get a carton of milk. Someone I know was in Corowa one time, and she saw my father pull up outside the milk bar, buy a carton of milk and then get back into the car and drive off. They drive all the way into Corowa rather than risk running into me. Or Brett. I mean, God forbid they see me, see their daughter. They’d rather go across the border, just to avoid me. Did you know that?

  No, I didn’t, I say.

  And so my father comes in today, of all days, Charlotte says. I mean it, I should be laughing.

  I stand at the back window, watching a plane, far away and high up. It turns and a thin, white wake follows it across the sky and out of view. The line hangs and bloats and begins to fall in streaks that drift and plump and come together to marble the sky and the sky turns white to all horizons and glows from within, pearl now and blooming, growing thick and heavy across the expanse. Paddocks and farmhouses and lone dead trees disappear, crops and vines, the razor-lines of fences. They grow faint and fade and are gone. The sun is behind the cloud, pale and orange and a halo around it, bleeding into the cloud, the cloud like wax, and the light spreads across it, spits radiance and traces the billowing. The cloud grows and forms and reforms in mounds and hollows, plateaus, eddies, shaved lines and frayed, edges of brilliance, colours of stone. It is a strange body of a thing, moving, changing, changing as it moves, swelling out of itself in slow clustered fists, carbuncles and wispy tendrils, enormous in all directions and everything lost in it as it comes, earth and sky, everything.

  Come and look at this, I say to Charlotte.

  Charlotte gets off the couch and stands next to me by the back window and we watch the cloud roll into town.

  My God, says Charlotte.

  I wonder where Brett is, says Charlotte.

  A fall in light like dusk and the light strange, the copper sun veiled, smouldering, barely there. Something like a light rain falls, but not rain, and it hisses and spits as it hits the roof tiles and corrugated iron, the guttering and concrete. Steam bursts upwards, twisting and dispersing and hovering, forming a low smoky cover, cascading from the eaves. Drops splatter against the windows, making dirty white streaks and spots. Leaves flutter, struck and stained. A smell like burning rubber. It begins suddenly, stops suddenly and the cloud is upon us.

  Charlotte is looking out the window.

  So, what now? she says. What does this mean? Do we have to stay inside now?

  Looks like it, doesn’t it, I say.

  Well for how long? she says. I mean, all day? How long does this all last?

  Why? I say. You planning on going somewhere?

  No, says Charlotte. Of course I wasn’t planning on going anywhere.

  She starts pacing the room.

  It’s just I can’t stand being cooped up like this, she says.

  She paces some more and sits down.

  I feel like I’ve been stuck here forever.

  Outside the fog is thick, the light dim. Everything has closed in and it is like there is nothing else, nothing but me and Charlotte sitting in this room, trapped within blind spaces, the world stolen by the fog and all that is left is this room, this house, me and Charlotte alone.

  The pain in my finger has spread and the rheumatism is upon me. I have a fever. I look at my hand and it is red and swollen. It has gone numb and my arm numb too and it prickles all along when I shake it. My knees ache, everything aches, all the joints and bones in my body. My insides bubble and swell and feel fit to burst. I feel my age and my weakness and I think to myself, You were right old man, you were right and it is what you said all along. You stop and it comes and you knew one day it would all come down on you and here it is, nothing but a broken body and a wandering mind because you stopped, old man, and you should have known that when you stop it all stops with you, and this body has been coming apart for some time now but not stopped yet, not stopped quite yet but still going like shaking machinery works on in a rattling way, shaking but held together, slumping this way and that, spitting bolts and rivets, but held together by the movement, by the very movement itself, that’s the thing, against all common thought, and it must have been long ago and forgotten but now I remember it. It was like life, some desperate life, some dogged will in that machine kept it going, kept it together in movement and against the very laws of nature was what it was because I remember men standing in wonderment, watching it heave its last, but only for a moment while the machine screamed and sparked, wheels and cogs racing, the spit pieces flying, but still going until a flick of a switch and the engine stops and slows and one great groan, the last, the very last, and it collapses in a heap of rusted metal, wheels and cogs and frame, all of it, a useless heap, a pile of scrap and I cannot remember for what or why or when, maybe as a child I saw it, and who knew that the memory would stick and that it would come back now and that now, not remembering when or where or why, just the tremor and movement in that dark shed and the collapse and groan and who knew that one day you would see yourself in that, like it was all arranged in time, you the same now, clattering along the same. But no, because I already knew and haven’t I said it myself and said it so many times but nobody listens and nobody believes but here it is. I am broken, dried up, scrap, but for the movement, and this I know, I must keep on going, go until I drop, because to live like this, no, not like this, never like this, this waiting, this pain of mind and body worse than death itself.

  Charlotte is reading from a women’s magazine she must of got from somewhere. She leaves the room and comes back with a small zippered bag and takes out tiny flat boxes and a tiny bottle, a black pencil and a shiny little tool. She arranges them on the coffee table and opens up a round clasped mirror and stands it in front of her. Then she flips through the magazine and starts reading again.

  I watch as she pulls down her bottom eyelid with her finger and draws a black line along the r
im with the pencil and then the same along the top, one eye and then the other, looking into the mirror all the time. She colours her eyelids green and silver and brushes it all together and up to her eyebrows, silver and green, then smooths it with a cotton bud in quick small strokes, everything done in quick small strokes, drawing and smoothing and brushing over and over again. She squeezes her eyes near shut and opens them to look in the mirror, she does everything looking into the mirror, turning her head and looking from side to side and askew. And she darkens her eyebrows and brushes them as well and takes the little tool and clamps her eyelashes with it, clamping and unclamping and then brushes the eyelashes upwards until they are thick and black and long and high and then the bottom ones, brushing down. She goes to it again with the cotton buds and the brush and looks long at the mirror from all angles and holds it up and does things over again.

  Charlotte looks at me.

  It’s supposed to make my eyes look bigger and brighter, she says. What do you think, Smithy? Do my eyes look bigger and brighter?

  I look at Charlotte’s eyes. She opens them wide for me to see. Charlotte laughs and looks back at herself in the mirror.

  *

  I sit looking out at the backyard, watching the slow-moving plumes of fog, the fog thinner now, like mist, the mist of a winter’s morning. Trees and roofs and fences seem far off, everything seems far off.

  The sun breaks through the clouds, their edges craggy as slate and bright as embers. Shafts of light slice through the hanging poison and fade and reappear, filtering through the weaving mist, but not like mist now, not in the light, because it does not lift with the sun but moves about illuminated, not mist now but something nearly solid and real.

  Muted light pulses latticed through the windows and casts its brief movement across the room. I watch the play of light and shadow and look about the room with its armchairs and couch, green and faintly checked with orange to match the orange carpet, the patterned curtains and scrim, the mantelpiece of coloured rocks and the mirror above, Florrie’s crystal cake-stand, the display cabinet with its things, the picture of the sea.