by Liam Pieper
While Ardian was alive, when Mum was sober she’d snap at him, and he’d snap back, ‘Would you just have a fucking joint, Mum?’ This would offend her so much she would have to have a joint to calm down.
‘You can’t keep weed in the house. It’s not fair to Hamish. Clean it out. Take it to a friend’s house or go get high in the park like a teenager. Just get it the fuck out of the house.’
In the end, Dad did get the drugs out of the house, and when Hamish got out of hospital, the place was clean. Fresh from rehab, he continued his detox, slowly straightening out and putting his life back together. His girlfriend, a level-headed, no-nonsense young lady who doesn’t take shit from suckers, has helped him to understand how things work in the world when you’re sober. He has, despite everything – his own efforts to fuck it all up, my immaculate instruction in how to burn out – made it.
And as for Mum and Dad, well, a family is always a work in progress. Without the coruscating decay of a home full of pills and powders, things began to get better around the house. Mum bought a bunch of nicotine gum from the internet and went cold turkey, and she is still clean, which makes me indescribably proud.
Dad kept his weed out of the house, at least technically. Occasionally he claims to have quit, but everyone knows he keeps his stash behind the washer-dryer in the shed out back.
And, finally, after a quarter of a century, I’m starting to understand. I can’t, as much as I would like to, blame my problems on my unconventional upbringing. The hippie generation passed me a torch, and I used it to burn the world down. Sure, they taught me how to think outside the law, but they didn’t give me my coke problem, and they sure as all get-out didn’t teach me to lie and steal and cheat. Nobody ever made me drink, smoke or snort anything except, of course, for myself, that rascal.
Many years ago, after I’d been caught hurling rocks at cars with a friend, my mum urged me not to give in to peer pressure. ‘I don’t care what your friends think is cool! If your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do it?’ Back then I’d shaken my head mutely, but with hindsight the answer is of course, yes, I’d have been over there in a shot.
There’s a lesson there that little vandal Liam could have taught me that would have saved cokehead Liam some time and money later on – which is, yes, rocks are fun, but you’d be better off not fucking around with them.
Somehow, life finds a way. My folks retired from their jobs and settled into the semi-agrarian bohemian suburban life they’d wanted for us all those years ago. They adopted another cat, an adorable Persian, who immediately started a vicious turf war with Aphrodite, our ageing, aloof housecat. The cats eat dinner with the family, off dinner plates, enjoying chicken cuts that Mum buys especially according to each cat’s taste. They sit on either side of the table with their haunches on the seats and their forepaws neatly gripping the sides of the plates as they eat. Occasionally one will stop munching to look up and glare warily at the other and hiss softly before returning to the meal. I asked Mum how they came to eat at the table and she seemed surprised by the question.
‘They just like to have dinner there,’ she said matter-of-factly, then, more thoughtfully, ‘I don’t mind because they’re part of the family, but occasionally it makes me worry that we might be eccentric. I don’t want people to think we’re nuts or anything.’
Someone once told me that a family is a group of people thrown together by fate who become weirder and weirder until nobody else can understand them. And we are, after all of it, still standing, the four of us, and our ghostly fifth. Sometimes, when we gather for dinner, I absentmindedly set a plate for Ardian, which then sits empty throughout the meal until it goes back into the cupboard, untouched. Does he, like my grandmother believes, watch over us? No matter; we watch for him.
We are all twisting kaleidoscopes, shining genetic potential that tumbles into place with turning circumstance. Hamish, more or less genetically identical to me, with similar experiences, is different. While I am lazy, he is industrious. Where I am cynical, he is hopeful; where I am vindictive, he is kind. Where I am pretentious and carnivorous in my appetites, he is more down-to-earth, living off chips and lentils. If I’d made different choices, perhaps my life would look more like his, and I’d be standing in the kitchen in Thai fisherman’s pants, carefully chewing a sliver of steak to test its texture before serving, then spitting it out before it could be said to break my vegetarianism.
There aren’t any hard and fast rules on how to live your life. That is what I got from my folks, and all the rest is on me.
The last time I visited we sat at the table while my mum made dinner and Dad was out ‘doing the laundry’. Hamish and his girlfriend sat next to each other at the head of the table, playing footsies and whispering together. Mum set out the plates for us, and for the cats, and then went out to call Dad in to dinner. He emerged from the shed, carrying a basket of neatly folded washing, fresh, crisp and fragrant with the smell of detergent and of fabric softener and of weed, of home.
First of all, thanks to Mum and Dad who got up and went to work every day at jobs they hated to keep me fed and clothed, and still found time to read to me and teach me to dig on books. Same goes for Letitia Gregory, my first ever editor, as well as the rest of the family for inspiration. Hamish – I guess we’re even for that car now.
Thanks to everyone who helped me piece together the past, a thankless, often painful game of herding cats: Carla Shallies, Avi Hanner, Nadia Toukhsati and Mel Clements, along with Vickie Shuttleworth and the National Trust.
To everyone who supported me or just made sure I didn’t swallow my tongue: Jules Pascoe, Darcy McNulty, Victoria Khroundina, Dr Emma Burrows – thank you.
Thank you to everyone who read early drafts and offered notes at all stages of writing – especially Nikola Lusk, Lorelei Vashti and Anna Krien, but most of all Sofija Stefanovic. Honestly, I don’t know how anyone writes anything without you along to help. Special thanks to all the editors who threw me a bone over the years and worked to make my writing better: Kelly Chandler, Tom Doig, Zoe Dattner, Louise Swinn and Sam Cooney, and especially to Ronnie Scott, without whom nobody working in Australian letters would know shit about shit.
Thanks to all the Penguins who worked on this book, especially John Canty for designing a cover far better than the contents, Anyez Lindop, Rhian Davies and Louise Ryan for going above and beyond to persuade folk to read it, and Ben Ball for showing me that the story I’d originally had in mind was only the tip of the iceberg, and also that I had to put more effort into my metaphors. Extra special thanks to Bridget Maidment for delousing the final draft.
And, of course, to Cate Blake. I’ve heard it said that authors who lavish praise upon their editors are victims of Stockholm syndrome, but I have been in worse hostage situations before. Thank you, Cate, for carving the still-beating heart out of my truly awful first drafts, and for making me remove all the literary references and song lyrics.
And the most gratitude for the great green light of my life, my Michaela; God only knows what I’d be without you.
HAMISH HAMILTON
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First published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2014
Text copyright © Liam Pieper 2014
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a true story, mostly. For brevity or clarity, the chronologies of some incidents have been condensed or altered, while some names and character details have been changed to protect identities and organisations. With these exceptions, the events depicted in this book are true to the best of the author’s recollection, although, frankly, his memory isn’t what it used to be. And the author’s father would like to assert that he does not smoke nearly as much pot as is depicted.
Design by John Canty © Penguin Group (Australia)
Cover photograph by S. Pieper
penguin.com.au
ISBN: 978-1-74348-191-2
THE BEGINNING
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