The Book of Ordinary People

by Claire Varley

  When she arrived home the letterbox was empty.

  14

  Patrick

  North Facing Window: Çem Aksu

  June 2016

  By Rik Lee

  If you’d told him ten years ago, Çem Aksu would never have believed that he would one day be elected to local council. ‘It shows you anyone can achieve anything if they work hard enough,’ Çem says from his desk inside Hume City Council, twin Turkish and Australian flags entwined in a statue behind him.

  Or, Patrick thought, if they planted enough dummy candidates to swing the vote their way. He stared at his laptop for a moment, hands poised as if preparing for a piano concerto, then let them fall limply to the benchtop. It had been a short interview and he had been distracted the whole time. Distracted by the dip and swirl of the man’s hands as he spoke, by the way the corners of his pilose moustache coiled under his top lip like a Gauguin self-portrait, by the scores of shiny faux-gold statuettes lining the shelves behind him. By the framed map on the wall, the great hunk of land bridging east and west. His eyes kept travelling back to the lower right border as the councillor spoke. The councillor had gestured to a pile of newspaper clippings, leafing through them to demonstrate his adroitness when it came to cutting ribbons, delivering stirring orations and posing in front of things with his arms crossed sternly and his face set with consternation. He’d nodded along, neglected notepad in hand, the map shrieking from the wall as the faintest pinpoint of the farthest reaches called him back for retribution. Huddled in the storm clouds, dragging itself through the mucky streets, singing like a beacon through the earth’s orbit. And he had excused himself suddenly, because those little faux-gold statuettes were watching him, seeing through each of the flimsy layers he’d cloaked himself in, horrified by what they saw beneath, and because he couldn’t hear anything anyway over the caterwauling of the map.

  Hence, there was little to write of now that he set himself to the task, huddled on a stool in the window of Marios. He shoved some more Danish into his mouth. His head was sore, the pain spreading out in radial prongs from a point at the base of his skull. They’d been more frequent, these headaches that were really migraines, cascading over one another in the weeks since the television debacle.

  She’d been so angry when she’d called him, Sarah the case worker. Livid. She’d shouted into the phone so vehemently he’d had to hold it from his ear for fear of aural damage. He’d apologised, of course he had, profusely and earnestly, but it hadn’t made much difference. The damage was, as she’d reminded him several times, already well and truly done. And she’d used his name – Patrick – the one he hadn’t needed for all this time, and each word had landed the harder because of this, tearing little pieces from his armour until he felt the version of himself beneath exposed once more. The worst part was that he’d tried to ensure this wouldn’t happen. Had made careful notes of how it should be cut, but the producer he’d been working with had waved her hand dismissively when he held out the pages for her. ‘Shoot me an email later,’ she’d called as they let him out at his apartment. He’d been mortified when it had aired that night, and if he was any kind of journalist he would have marched down there and demanded someone important see him then give them a proper telling-off, or at the very least sent an anonymous tip to Media Watch. But what he’d done instead, because this was the kind of journalist he apparently was now, was write a politely worded email tentatively questioning why they’d chosen to portray his interviewees in such a dishonest way, and then wait meekly for a reply that never came. What did come was the briefest of phone calls enquiring if he wanted more work, in response to which he’d panicked and lied, telling them he was about to head overseas for a family holiday, and they’d told him to get back in touch when he returned.

  That had been a fortnight ago, and instead of a glorious fictitious few weeks basking in the Balinese sun and drinking cocktails with little umbrellas, he’d spent them huddling under a real umbrella as the rain bucketed down upon the city. The staff at Marios had been very good about this, largely ignoring him despite his tendency to spend hours sitting in the window surrounded by a fleet of tepid, half-drunk coffees, a trail of Danish crumbs trekking across his whiskers as he watched the puddles pulse and quiver like something Brack would paint. This had been after the twenty-four hours he’d spent pinned to his pillow in the aftermath of the brain-strangling migraine that took hold following Sarah’s phone call.

  There was something his father had once told him, whistled from somewhere behind the tottering pile of Cantonese-language video tapes he’d procured from a distant relative in some obscure south-eastern suburb. ‘You can’t fail unless you give it a go!’ his father had chuckled, resolved to finally master his ancestors’ native tongue. Patrick’s grandparents, proud naturalised citizens, had spoken Cantonese only in private, for fear of poisoning their offsprings’ acquisition of English. So his father’s pursuit had seemed optimistic, when really it was misguided, because his father had disappeared into his study only to erupt again several hours later and topple the cassette tapes into the bin with a demonic defeated hiss. And this memory had come to Patrick as he’d laid there, Icarian in his bed, the knowledge that failure came only for those who tried.

  There had been a lot of YouTube during this time, and he was now on first name terms with several delivery boys from the local Indian restaurant, so at least there was that. He had taken to enquiring about their days, listening earnestly as they provided vivid detailed accounts, delighted to be asked about something that wasn’t to do with whether the pappadums were free or not. Alongside all that, it had all seemed to act as some sort of psychological plunger, demolishing whatever blockage had kept all the other stuff buried deep inside him. It came now in hiccups and gulps, little shattered rememberings of things he didn’t want to remember. The underwhelming flash of metal. The noise like a shovel hitting wet cement. The blood, and how there seemed so much of it. The flight with not even the remotest ounce of fight in it. And as he’d lain there in the dark, bits of Patrick came flooding back, the bits he thought he’d left behind. How they’d groaned to a halt four separate times on the journey south-west, so that by the time the bus deposited him in the little coastal Anatolian town, it rode on four new old tyres. How winter had stripped the bougainvillea of its tyrian purple flowers, so that they reached and clawed their skeletal fingers across the shuttered-up shop windows. How the landlady had stared at him, baffled, as he’d proffered the lira towards her in the courtyard of the empty guesthouse. How the landlady’s husband had studied him curiously, as he sipped his coffee in a sliver of feeble sun. ‘Are you here because of the wreck?’ he had asked, in confident accented English. And Patrick had not known for days that there lay beneath the waves an old DC-3 war plane sunk to the delight of divers, but it had made so much sense to him anyway.

  Patrick turned back to his laptop and attempted another sentence. Born and raised on the streets of Broadmeadows – and then he was distracted again, his fingers slowing as his mind started racing once more, bouncing between catastrophes. Those poor women. Imagine how it must have felt watching themselves on the news. Maybe they hadn’t seen it. You could only hope as much. And that young man . . . The ethics of it all grabbed hold of Patrick’s brain, wringing it with both hands, and he was filled with the sudden throbbing promise of another imminent migraine.

  He straightened, his balance wavering slightly on the stool, and his eyes suddenly locked on a familiar figure crossing the street. Patrick’s stomach dropped, his legs forgetting themselves. Rocking back onto the stool, he watched as Seymour completed his jaywalk and passed by Marios. He continued on a few metres before stopping suddenly, spinning on his heels and doubling back. Seymour stood at the window before Patrick, pressing his face into the glass. He hovered there a moment, watching silently like a ghost as his breath fogged the glass in rapid tumbles, then his face contorted and he burst into tears.

&n
bsp; Eventually Seymour was inside the café, standing a cautious distance from Patrick. As he collected himself, Patrick felt the gripping tension behind his eye sockets deepen, shuddering down his cranium and into his shoulder blade.

  ‘I’m so sorry but will you excuse me one moment?’ Patrick said.

  Seymour’s face revealed nothing.

  ‘I promise I’m not running away.’

  Seymour scoffed at this. Patrick slid off the stool and shuffled awkwardly to the restrooms. He slammed the door behind him, scrabbling in his pocket for the little foreign painkillers. He washed them down with a scoop of tap water, plunging his face into the stream as his fingers worked his temples. Despite the weeks of what effectively amounted to staking out Seymour’s place of employment, Patrick did not at all feel ready for this. Perhaps he should run away? Slip out the back door, jump over the garbage skips like the hero of an action movie, and tear off towards the horizon. But he knew he couldn’t do this because not even he was capable of something like that. Besides, he could barely walk now. His vision was clouding, and faint white auras were creeping into the world as the migrainous fog descended. He sunk onto the toilet lid.

  ‘Are you okay in there?’ Seymour’s voice was hard and concerned, a balancing act he was struggling to master.

  Patrick raised his head. The world was swimming, blurring, feeding into itself like when music videos discovered the echo effect in the nineties.

  ‘Patrick?’

  Patrick squeezed his eyes shut, cradling his head once more. The door opened slightly and Seymour peered in.

  ‘What’s going on? You look terrible.’

  ‘Migraine,’ Patrick replied through clenched teeth.

  Seymour surveyed him, then clicked his tongue.

  ‘Jesus. Here, let me help.’

  He helped Patrick to his feet, then ushered him out of the restroom and through the café. Patrick leant into his shoulder, Seymour’s familiar scent flooding him. He felt Seymour tense at the connection of flesh, pulling away to collect Patrick’s notebook from the benchtop. Seymour guided him out through the front door and the world did a woozy Charleston.

  ‘What’s your address?’ Seymour asked, thumbing the screen of his mobile.

  He guided Patrick towards the car when it arrived. As he stumbled over the curb, Patrick forced an eye open. The rideshare driver was watching him curiously from the car. Patrick shifted his head slightly and his eyes met Seymour’s.

  ‘You’re back,’ Seymour said, his voice without tone.

  ‘I’m back,’ Patrick echoed.

  ‘Did you ever actually go?’

  Patrick’s brow furrowed.

  ‘Of course I did,’ he whispered from somewhere inside the migraine. ‘Just . . . not very well.’

  ‘I see.’

  His eyes dropped and he noticed a wad of cards tucked into Seymour’s waistband. Seymour followed his gaze, frowning at the cards as if suddenly remembering them. One arm still holding up Patrick, he pulled the wad free and fanned them gently.

  ‘Bookmarks. For Carole’s new book. I’m meant to leave them in all the hip places where people go.’

  Seymour slid them into his coat pocket. As he did, the pain reared up in Patrick’s skull and he groaned loudly. He could feel Seymour scrutinising him and he stepped away from him, leaning against the car.

  ‘You look like someone who has done terrible things and had terrible things done to them,’ Seymour said.

  The distance that stretched between them suddenly made itself known, and Patrick felt like crying because of everything that had happened and everything that he’d done.

  ‘I wish they hadn’t,’ he said in a very small voice.

  Seymour’s jaw loosened, the briefest of movements. Worlds shifted in his impassive face as he watched Patrick.

  ‘Are you back? Properly back?’

  Patrick nodded slightly at Seymour.

  ‘You coming or what?’ Inside the car, the driver drummed the steering wheel impatiently with the fingers of his right hand.

  Patrick opened the car door and slipped awkwardly into the passenger seat. The driver gave a frustrated exhalation and flicked on the indicator.

  ‘Wait,’ Seymour called. ‘Here.’

  He seized one of the bookmarks then grabbed a biro from his lapel pocket.

  ‘Call me if you have any problems getting home. I have a new number.’

  He thrust the bookmark at Patrick then stepped away as the car pulled onto the street.

  Back at his apartment, Patrick managed to navigate the way up the stairs to his front door, pulling it shut behind him. He groped his way down the hallway, eyes firmly shut, and shuffled into the little kitchen. He downed a glass of water then felt his way back towards the bedroom, stubbing his toe on the edge of the monolithic sideboard. He finally collapsed into his bed, pulling the cover over him to clothe himself in darkness. Reaching down to tug off his trousers, his fingers brushed the outline of the bookmark in his pocket. He smiled briefly, then the smile turned into a frown, and for a moment everything was too loud to breathe and he squeezed his eyes shut despite the fact that they already were. Stop, please, I only want to help! Patrick bit down on his tongue, his fists clenched tight, trembling as his head shook with everything that was inside.

  15

  Nell

  – at which time the barrister for the applicant made clear that his client would proceed with the application for a full intervention order as concerns remained about the threat posed by our client (OC) to the applicant and their two children, with particular regard to alleged past abusive behaviour. At this point OC proceeded to swear at the other party across the room and Magistrate Davidson demanded she restrain herself. OC took her seat once more but not before conveying to the magistrate

  ‘Fuck fuck fucking fuck.’

  Nell had never seen DB properly angry but properly angry was what he had been, slamming his hand about the office walls and the desk until he’d hurt himself. Nell had looked around, embarrassed, but no one in the office seemed particularly bothered by this display. He hammered again, this time with his foot, the end of his tapered black derby pecking at the nearest desk leg like an outraged woodpecker. Eventually he had calmed himself, hurling his tall body into his office chair and slamming his elbows onto the desk in front of him. Nell sat tentatively opposite, her client notes half complete, waiting for him to speak. When he did, he looked like a combination of the bad cop in a good cop/bad cop pairing and a child who had just discovered the truth about Santa.

  ‘She lied to us. She fucking lied to us.’

  Nell made sure her voice was measured.

  ‘We don’t know that for sure.’

  ‘Lied, withheld information, hid things – it’s all the same.’

  ‘I did tell you that –’

  She’d stopped abruptly. Mr Williams was making his way across the office. Dressed smartly in a pressed off-white suit, he looked more like he was embarking on a picnic at his southern country manor than putting in a day’s work at a top-tier law firm. His eyes sparkled expectantly as he stopped by their desk, leaning against it for support.

  ‘Mr Arnolds. Helena. Successful day at the shop?’

  Nell waited for DB’s response. He offered a confirmatory thumbs-up, his face beset with a vaudevillian grin.

  ‘Getting there. The ex is contesting the cross-application so we’ve got directions in a few weeks. Order is still in place but should all be sorted soon enough.’

  Mr Williams nodded cautiously. He stroked his substantial girth as if it were a house pet.

  ‘Who did you draw?’

  ‘Davidson. I know.’ DB gave an elaborate not-in-my-hands gesture.

  ‘Unfortunate. Never met a magistrate so ill equipped to handle a lemonade stand, let alone a civil proceeding. Not much chop when it comes to fam
ily violence either from my understanding. Used to see him on the squash courts a bit. Terrible aim. Like playing against one of those inflatable things they have outside of car dealerships. All arms and no direction.’

  Nell recalled the magistrate’s face as he’d listened to DB speak, barely attempting to cover his yawns. He’d sighed heavily at the end, as if the list of things he would rather be doing was both extensive and significantly more interesting.

  ‘Anyway, can’t be helped,’ Mr Williams continued. ‘You’ve got your game plan worked out? You know how important it is for the firm that we see a win here.’

  It wasn’t a question. DB extended his thumbs again.

  ‘Absolutely. Putting the ducks in a row as we speak.’

  ‘That’s what I like to hear.’ Mr Williams smiled, though it was a quarter less of a smile than the initial one.

  There had been a moment outside the courtroom when Nell had found herself alone. He had approached her, Madeline’s husband, offering a tentative handshake.

  ‘We’ve not met properly. I’m Eric Murray. I just wanted you to know I’m sorry about all this bother. About Madeline. She’s . . . she’s not well. She needs help. Psychological help. I’ve tried, god knows, but it’s just been so difficult.’

  He’d apologised again, his face racked with concern, then his lawyer had called him away. Nell had been too stunned to tell anyone but it had stayed with her, sitting uncomfortably in the pit of her already hesitant gut. In a place where things called for restraint.

  Mr Williams offered a final encouraging thumbs-up. ‘You’ve both got my absolute confidence.’

  DB’s eyes had followed Mr Williams as he made his way out of the office.

  ‘Fuck,’ he whispered, clutching his cheeks like a Renaissance painting, and then he went back to being angry.

  *

  When she came in for her next appointment, Madeline was angry too. She strode into the consulting room, hurling her handbag at the seat, showing no sign of her previous reserved self.