by Mark O'Flynn
Ava sidles along the fence towards the woman until they stand a yard or two apart. The clouds now like fat maggots in the valley. It’s time for a demonstration of her purpose. From the woman’s face, its lines and topography, Ava can see the whole unique and common story. A life in its moment. Its distinction.
In one hand Ava holds her machete aloft in praise of the spectacle that is the landscape, old Mount Solitary on the far side of the valley. In the other hand the bagged bottle of sherry.
‘Salud,’ she shouts at the top of her lungs.
ELEVENSES
Limping with a terribly painful perforation to the sole of her foot is how Poppy Whitaker finds herself after treading in the dark on the toy bulldozer her grandson had left on the floor. She’d yelped and even sworn under her breath – ‘Sugar’ – but there was no one to hear her in the middle of the night. Ava can hear it, she knows about that silence. Crying her way to the bathroom, eyes squinting in the sudden brightness, Poppy had sat on the edge of the bath no one used anymore and examined with difficulty the soft underside of her foot. When she massaged her flesh a small mole of blood appeared. The bulldozer’s vertical exhaust pipe had punctured her tender fleshy arch. Why had she woken? The call of nature? No, the deafening wordlessness of nature. She splashed water on her face and examined her darkened eyes in the mirror. Exhaustion was the last thing remaining there, although she knew further sleep would be impossible. All other emotion had been drained from her. She’d had no idea how deep that pool could be, how cavernous. Beneath her weariness there was nothing but bone. The house was awfully quiet.
In the years before Theo died – Ava can imagine the pair of them – Poppy and her husband would stroll arm in arm down to the cliff tops and watch the sunsets. It was their special evening treat. In younger days they’d walk the Prince Henry walk, or the Lilianfels track, many of the others also. Poppy could say the names of most of the bird life: the Brush Bronzewing, the King Parrot, the Tawny Frogmouth, the Scarlet Robin, the Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike, the Eastern Whipbird. Ava knows nothing about birds but Poppy can tell many of them by their call. She relished the challenge of a bird call she could not identify. That would get her thumbing through her books. Theo used to tease her about it.
‘Bird brain,’ he’d call her.
And she’d call back, ‘At least I have a brain.’
Ava wonders if there is any acrimony in the marriage, or if it floats on a more archetypal happiness.
Then he grew sick, and none of the new-fangled hospital technology with tubes going into and out of him, none of the drugs under the sun could keep him alive. The diagnosis and the prognosis, and the other terms that did not summarise who Theo was at all, they had the effect of reducing him to a ‘case’. There was probably a file with a chart in it somewhere. Finally, after the prolonged diminishing, the hospital told her to take him home and keep him comfortable. So they did. He was zonked out of his mind much of the time, but a part of him at least, Poppy was sure, knew where he was. Knew he was in his own bed in his own home, with his glasses within reach on his bedside table. He seemed to recognise the painting of the men pushing the funny little fishing boat out to sea that hung on the wall by the window. Paul Henry it was, the Irish painter. Theo loved that painting even though he’d never been fishing in his life. Why would a man who had never fished like fishing? Ava wonders.
One morning he told Poppy his waking dream.
‘I dreamed there was a brick sitting on a wall.’
What on earth could that mean? Ava asks herself; a brick on a wall, that’s not very adventurous, perhaps he made that up.
Theo recognised Denise, their daughter, when she arrived from interstate with her husband, Athol, and the kids. During one lucid period Theo made an attempt to remember their names.
Seeing him so flat and shrunken, the skin stretched over his skull, frightened the children a little, his breath often barely enough to fill his mouth. Denise encouraged them to enter the room, to ignore the smells and stuffiness and play quietly in the corner. They did for a while, then they left and could be heard running around outside, which was its own tonic. He took a sip from his mug.
‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned to enjoy in this life,’ Theo said once, ‘it’s lemonade.’
In the early hours, it must have been Saturday morning, a Brown Thornbill was singing its first sweet notes, Theo took a deep breath, deeper than he had in weeks, and said: ‘That’s mine.’
Then his eyes closed and he died.
Poppy almost asked him what he meant, but she didn’t. She held his hand and sat there till morning, until Denise came in her dressing gown and, taking in the scene which required nothing of her, felt her father’s cold cheek.
Ava places her hand on her own cheek, which is quite warm.
Later Denise rang the hospital. A request for the death certificate was registered. They said, with great tact and understanding, that she had best deal directly with the funeral parlour. Poppy hated that word – parlour. It made it sound like they were going to host a soirée. In turn the funeral people said they could not come until business reopened and therefore the best thing (but who knew what was the best thing?) would be to leave him laid out where he was until the hearse arrived early Monday morning. Afterwards Poppy felt hugely relieved, and grateful, that they had taken the decision (which turned out to be absolutely the best thing) out of her hands.
All weekend people came to call. Their neighbours, Theo’s friends, old work colleagues from long ago, family. Poppy imagined that Denise or Athol had made a few quiet phone calls and asked people to pass the news along, like Chinese whispers, so that when they came full circle they might somehow find that the rumour was untrue and Theo had not died at all. However, the message did not change. The visitors went into the bedroom, some loitering in the doorway, and there he was, not quite sitting up, surrounded by pillows, his cheekbones prominent, but looking calm and peaceful. His mouth hung open. Denise and Poppy had changed the linen and tidied the room a bit, closing the cupboard doors, dusting the fishermen and their boat. Some of his friends spoke to him. It did not take long for the room to fill with flowers – it became quite cloying – so they had to place them elsewhere throughout the house. The few slow flies that had not succumbed to winter buzzed softly.
Another strange thing was that, once he had gone, the room seemed strangely full of subdued life, as if a wonderful meal had just been finished. The grandchildren, Rick and Sonia, took their toys in there and were happy to play on the carpet at the foot of the bed while people sat in chairs around them. For them it seemed no different a thing than if their grandpa was dozing, but usually when he dozed he had a little whistling sound caught in his nose. No one told them to pipe down. All weekend visitors came and went. They entertained in there and the atmosphere was almost quietly festive. So many cups of tea. People left curries and casseroles. When it became too much Poppy went and lay down in the study, where the couch unfolded into a spare bed.
One by one the visitors left until just the family remained to deal with the shrinking pool of things to be said. Monday morning arrived and the funeral director came with his wife. They made quite a team. They moved their gurney between the children playing on the floor, over their toys, stepping carefully so as not to break anything. Poppy left the room while they lifted Theo off the bed and placed him on the trolley. They covered him with their own special sheet and strapped him down as if he was going on a whirlwind ride at the circus. Denise saw the husband-and-wife team glance at each other and at the children.
‘Excuse us now, kids.’
The children moved aside. Rick grabbed a racing car off the floor.
‘Say goodbye, Rick and Sonia,’ said Denise.
‘Bye-bye, Grandpa,’ they called.
The funeral people wheeled the trolley out of the house. Denise followed while Poppy watched from the front door. As they were
sliding the gurney into the back of the unadorned hearse the undertaker turned to Denise.
‘I’ve never seen that before. Having the children there like that. Those kids are going to have the healthiest attitude to death when they grow up.’
‘Thanks,’ said Denise. ‘It wasn’t scary. So they didn’t need to be scared.’
The husband-and-wife team shook her hand.
‘A good death,’ said the man.
The back door clicked softly shut. The hearse drove away.
A good death.
A few days after the funeral, the house empty at last, Poppy trod on the toy bulldozer in the darkness. She picked it up and put it on the sideboard with the slowly wilting flowers, tears of a different source prickling in her eyes. The weight of Theo’s head was still impressed on his pillow. The next day she decided to leave the house; that is, to get out into the open air. Alone. It had been so long. She could not stand it anymore. It was a grey, dazed morning. She did not know where she was going until she found herself at the fence at the edge of the cliff.
* * *
‘Salud!’ Ava shouts, and coughs solidly.
The echo returns to her. On the other side of the fence, clinging to a devil-bush, is a lace handkerchief. Right there at the slippery edge of the cliff. Surely a little girl’s handkerchief. Who is there to retrieve it? Why, no one but Ava, who in her mind leaps the fence and snatches it up in her teeth, returned with a bow.
Satisfied with her echo Ava turns again to the woman beside her. She gazes for a while at the side of her face, then says at last:
‘Buck up, old girl.’
The woman does not react. She has barely reacted to the echoing shout. Ava proffers the bottle in its brown shroud. Still the woman does not notice. Ava taps her on the elbow with it. Poppy starts.
‘Feel like a snifter, old girl?’ asks Ava.
The old woman snaps out of it. The pain in her foot twinges again.
‘Oh no. Thank you. No. I.’ She stops. She can’t go on. Her whole life there in her face. ‘It’s just.’
‘Yes. I’m all ears,’ says Ava, all ears.
‘I don’t want to bother you.’
‘No bother to me,’ says Ava. ‘Tell me all about it. Yell your lungs out. I’ll let you know if you’re boring me.’
Poppy takes a step away, as if to leave, but Ava follows her.
‘Don’t go.’
There seems to be nothing for it but to have a conversation.
‘It’s just,’ says Poppy. ‘My husband. He passed away.’
‘Recently?’
‘Er, yes, recently.’
‘The husbands. They do that. One minute they’re there and everything’s smooth sailing. The next they’ve vanished into thin air and your happy little dinghy has capsized. Well, chin up, sister. Plenty more fish in the quagmire.’
Ava drinks. The bubbles in her throat.
‘You’re sure you won’t – partake?’
‘No. Er, no thank you. I really must—’
‘Tell me, have you been blessed, and I use the term advisedly, with progeny?’
‘Children?’
‘Yes.’
‘I have—’
‘Don’t. At our age they’re not worth it.’
‘I—’
‘I’m talking from experience.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ says Poppy.
‘Stone foetuses, all of them.’
And Poppy, astonished, seems to know what this strange woman is talking about. It’s what she has too. A fossil of grief that will never go away.
Yes, thinks Ava in return, she knows what I’m on about. We can read each other’s mind.
Ava would like to know her name, but cannot bring herself to ask. Instead she broaches a delicate subject the only way she knows how.
‘Are you about to dive off over the fence into the eternal everlasting?’
‘What? I. No. No.’
‘You look as though you are.’
‘I’m. No. He’s only just … Recently. The funeral was last week. I’m very … We used to come here … for the view.’
‘Sauntering.’
‘Well, yes. I suppose. We used to like the birds.’
‘How romantic,’ says Ava. ‘I comprehend. Tempting as that little handkerchief resting there may be, diving off the edge is no way for a woman to do it.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ says Poppy.
Stone foetuses are all very interesting, but this is getting a bit close to the unspoken bone of it.
‘No. A woman uses her cunning wiles. Pills. Medicinals. Wisdom of the herbivores. However, if it were me I’d take a shotgun and curl my thorny old toe around the trigger and blow my lid off. Sky high! Ha! That’d show ’em. But it’s never come to that.’
There is a fervid quality in Ava’s voice that brings the grieving woman back to her senses. Poppy stares at her. Here she is. A woman at the fence. On the brink. Nothing but the future.
‘You’re sure you won’t have a snifter? Call it elevenses. It’ll put everything in perspective.’
The woman snorts. It is a snort halfway between a stifled laugh and a sob.
‘All right then.’
She receives the bottle from Ava’s outstretched hand, tips it back and takes a tentative sip. Splutters softly.
‘Oh my.’
‘Bracing?’ says Ava. ‘Against the onslaught. Not so?’
‘Yes. So. Thank you, but I won’t have any more. In fact, I should probably be going home.’
‘Don’t rush off on my account, old girl. We’ve only just begun to talk. And where else have you got to go?’
‘Home.’
‘Why?’
‘I – I don’t know.’
‘There are no rules anymore,’ says Ava.
‘I suppose you’re right.’
They study the sky again, each from their different point of view.
‘It looks like it wants to rain,’ says Poppy at last. ‘I really must go.’
‘Me too, old girl. Home. Last place I want to be, but that’s where I’m going.’
Ava turns and dawdles along the fence line, strumming her finger along the wire.
‘Excuse me,’ calls the woman. Ava stops. ‘Your bottle.’
‘Ah, of course.’
Ava returns and takes the sherry in hand. Salud.
A Crescent Honeyeater calls out e-gypt e-gypt, from the bushes.
‘Thank you,’ says the woman, watching Ava’s departure. ‘I think.’
‘My pleasure,’ calls Ava over her shoulder, wandering away. Then calls:
‘Clouds like maggots. Ha! Look at them. Clouds like maggots.’
Ava turns and looks back. She sees the woman, Poppy, grief’s spell interrupted for the moment, who turns towards her own home and begins, Ava can just imagine it, that new journey.
Oh, Theo.
* * *
The hole in the side of the road is still there but the workmen have gone. What a life. Don’t slip in, Ava, she tells herself, you’ll never clamber out again. It’ll rain and fill up with tears and you’ll drown dead drownded. She glances around and, feeling herself unobserved, kicks a little dirt into it. But if someone was observing, who might that person be? What entity?
By the time Ava gets back to town she is fairly bursting to go to the pissoir. She could have gone in the bushes of Lilianfels, the salubrious guesthouse, or up any of half-a-dozen discreet side streets and alleyways, all leading nowhere. She goes into the first hotel she comes across, the Clarendon. No one about. Still too early. There are pictures of hairy musicians pasted to the noticeboard, coming soon to entertain you. She follows her nose and stands once more before the doors of a quintessential dilemma. Male or Female. Here is her paradox. A staccato voice seems to c
hallenge her, berate her. Hombre or Mujer. Mann or Frau. Homme or Femme. Gentleman or Lady. Come on, decide. She knows them all. She is them all. Not fluid or all-encompassing, gathering the harvest of the reaping fields, but fractured and split and bleeding. Her inner core weeping out of itself. There is nothing for hermaphrodites. It’s too confusing. The words rattle around in her earbones, androgynous and humming. How can she choose? She cannot choose. To choose is to sunder. It’s like the darkness beyond the edge of the cliff. Perhaps she’ll puff up with piss and pop? It’s too much to ask. She decides to abandon the choice and escapes outside to the open air again. No one sees her leave. It’s a private contradiction, the dark and the light, but which is which? She continues walking up the hill, the need more pressing now, pissupprest, it’s all she can do to hold herself together, until she finds the next standard office bearer of sanctuary – a church. They’re never hard to find. Here’s one. Which denomination she’s not quite sure, but they’re bound to have a dunny! And should she split and become atoms, dispersed entirely, then God is at hand. Even priests have to piss sometime, don’t they? Or is mercy a cliché?
As with the pub it takes a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. It’s a Catholic church. She can tell because the red light is shining outside the confessional cupboard. She wonders if that’s where they keep the mops and buckets after business hours, having swept up all those spilled sins and futile salutations. She should go in, one of these days. Relieve herself – no – unburden herself. Forgive me, old sport, but I spent seven years in an asylum cursing the deities that employ you. It wasn’t my fault. My husband could neither control nor contain me. I stole. I drank. I fornicated. With whom I can’t remember. They said I abandoned my children. Whether I did or whether I didn’t, I lived only for myself. Neither man nor woman, I’m proud of everything. I know you want more detail but that’s all I’m prepared to offer up, at the moment. What peace of mind can you give me in return? Nothing; I thought so.
