The Book of Ordinary People

by Claire Varley

  The next time she’d sought out a table by the brickwork, leaning her head against the rough surface and imagining her mother bracing herself against this wall. Refusing to leave. Refusing to be forgotten. There she would have stood, all five feet nothing of her, her words sharp and purposeful in her mother tongue as she talked the poor foreman into meeting her demands. And Evangelia was so sure, as her skin pressed into the bubbles and indents of the brickwork, that her mother’s palm had breathed into this wall, into this very spot, and here they were connected after all these decades.

  Today Evangelia sat in her seat, drinking the wine the waitress now knew to bring without her having to order, and wept for her mother. She knew how this looked – the strange woman who sat in the same seat crying to herself for forty-five minutes once a week – but she did not care in the slightest. Let them talk.

  Soon enough it was time to go. The biography class would be finishing and she needed to make her way home, where her children would be racing around rabid with end-of-term excitement. She realised as she stood that tonight would have been the last class. Her stomach dropped. That meant an end to her weekly visits. What excuse could she give Peter now that wouldn’t seem too obvious? It had been okay before, an omission rather than an outright lie, but anything beyond this would be purposeful deception and she had read enough gossip magazines to know how that usually went down. They were talking today, mostly because it was too difficult maintaining multiple family grudges, after a prickly evening following her discovery of his tendency to underpay their staff. Besides, they were now two staff short – she had made him pay Nina in full before she’d left on her adventure – and with today marking the beginning of the busy school holidays she had no excuse to not be at the shop.

  Evangelia hurried out of the café, refusing to acknowledge that this would be her final visit. She caught a train that would take her up past the TAFE and out to the shop where Peter and the children were waiting to take her home. She watched the houses shudder past, her mind still, her body rocking and settling as the train drew breath at each new station. As it took off from Bell Station, there was a cry from the door and a woman fell forward, papers flying from her arms. As the woman pushed herself upright, Evangelia realised it was Carole.

  ‘I’m okay,’ Carole said loudly, pulling herself to her feet. ‘Everyone go back to your phones.’

  Evangelia hurried over and swooped down to help her with the papers. Carole looked surprised.

  ‘Fancy seeing you here!’

  Evangelia held out the pile of battered papers.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Carole’s cheeks flushed red.

  ‘Yes, yes. My head was somewhere else completely and I’ve got on the wrong train. I’m meant to be heading towards the city. God knows what’s out this way.’

  ‘My home, for one thing,’ Evangelia replied, and Carole flushed a deeper red.

  The train curved to the right, sending Carole skittering towards the wall. Evangelia held out a hand to steady her.

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

  Carole looked close to tears.

  ‘Not really. I . . . I haven’t been sleeping that much lately and didn’t have time to eat, and class completely takes it out of me.’

  The train began to slow as it approached Preston Station.

  ‘Here, I’ll help you off,’ Evangelia said.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Carole said, but she took her arm. ‘You must think me some silly old woman. I’m really not, despite what my children seem to think. I’m not actually that old. I’m just –’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Evangelia interrupted. ‘Really.’

  ‘You can just leave me here,’ Carole began. ‘There’ll be another train soon enough.’

  ‘Stop that,’ Evangelia said. ‘We’re getting you some food. Me too. I’m starving.’ And as she said it, she realised it was true. It took a lot of energy to sit and be sad.

  They settled at a table in a quiet restaurant and ordered large bowls of pho. The waiter brought them longnecks of beer and Carole drank at hers thirstily.

  ‘Don’t you have somewhere you need to be?’ she asked.

  Evangelia shrugged. ‘It’s fine. I texted my husband to say we’re out celebrating the end of the course. He doesn’t expect me back for a while.’

  Carole watched her.

  ‘You stopped coming to class . . .’

  Evangelia ducked her head. ‘I . . . I wasn’t any good. I couldn’t tell her story the way I wanted to.’

  Carole snorted through her mouthful of beer. ‘You think any of us can? You think I’ve ever written anything that looks even remotely like I want it to? Inferior versions of the projected desire, that’s what the literary world is based on.’

  ‘I wanted to tell her story so much, but the problem was she didn’t do anything amazing. She didn’t do anything at all.’

  Evangelia dropped her head again, her eyes wet with tears. The shame of the funeral came flooding back.

  ‘After the funeral service, at the wake, my sister Lydia read a eulogy. Didn’t tell anyone she was going to do it. Just stood up and began this eulogy that none of us knew about.’

  Evangelia felt a sob rising up and tried to swallow it. This was ridiculous. She was sobbing like a child. Clearly this was her thing now, crying in public.

  ‘It was so short. You have no idea. It was so short, and all about us. Well, mostly about Lydia and her children, but it wasn’t about my mother at all. Not her as a person. It was all about who she was to us. And it made me so angry. I was so angry. But I didn’t know what to say, you know. I didn’t know how to wrestle the microphone from my sister’s hands and tell my mother’s story the way it was meant to be told. And I still don’t.’

  A new sob burst from her throat and she failed to catch it. Carole handed her a wad of napkins and she blew her nose loudly. The waiter arrived and attempted to place the huge bowls of steaming noodles discreetly in front of them. He backed off carefully, and his trepidation caused them both to burst into laughter. Evangelia pressed the napkins to her face again.

  ‘Jesus. I’m crying in a restaurant. How pathetic. You must think I’m a complete mess.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Carole said.

  ‘You must,’ Evangelia insisted. ‘I show up week after week with my terrible writing. How embarrassing. What a stupid idea to think I could tell her story.’

  She couldn’t meet Carole’s eyes. Carole pushed the bowls out of the way and reached across the table. She took Evangelia’s hands. Finding the soggy napkins, she put these to one side and then took them again.

  ‘Can I tell you a secret?’

  Evangelia shrugged.

  ‘I was only doing that class to sell more books. Initially, anyway. My publisher told me it looks good on your résumé and it’s a chance to build up word of mouth publicity, etc, etc. Only there really weren’t that many of you, and I’m not entirely sure Terry would have spoken to anyone about anything but his own book. So that was a bit redundant. But the thing is, initially I took one look around the class and thought, what the hell am I doing here? This isn’t going to help sell the book and that means fewer people are going to read my story and understand why we need to put our women back into history. Women like your mother. When you started talking about her, I thought, yes! Here’s my opportunity! Only then you stopped coming. I thought I was doing this amazing thing helping coax it out of you, but then you just disappeared, and I was stuck with Sita and Gwen, who were fine without me, and with bloody Terry.’

  Evangelia cringed. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘That’s not the point of this story.’ Carole clicked her tongue against her teeth. ‘The point is, you have a story worth telling and you’re going to find a way to tell it the way you want. To work with what you’ve got. And to not think you need something spectacular to make it matter. That�
��s a bloody cop-out, and that’s why women have been left out time and time again. Because they weren’t doing important things? Bullshit they weren’t. You tell me who decides what is important and what isn’t.’

  They ate their soup and Carole told Evangelia about how she’d learnt long ago to ignore the voices telling her it wasn’t worth seeking out these ordinary people from history. That this was the old school – the dusty keepers of history who had set the rules long ago – and it was about time those rules were changed. Because those rules kept them all out – the people whose gender or colour or disability or sexuality kept them from the pages of history. She had just begun an energetic oration on the value of reconceptualising the unknown when the restaurant fell into darkness.

  ‘Power out,’ the waiter told them apologetically, his face lit up by the light from his mobile. ‘The whole of the north, they reckon.’

  ‘Traffic will be chaos out there,’ Carole sighed. ‘We’d better leave now because it’s only going to get worse.’

  They got into taxis pointed in opposite directions, and Evangelia waved through the back window as they departed. The traffic lights were out, and the driver approached each one at speed, demanding his right of way. Evangelia squeezed her eyes shut, the world dark save for the car headlights, and felt terrified and alive. There were rules but those rules needed to be changed.

  When she arrived home, the kids were running feral about the darkened house. Peter had gathered together all her scented candles, and the house smelt of a pungent mix of citrus and spices.

  ‘Thank god you’re home, babe,’ Peter said, kissing her cheek with the earnest affection he had adopted in their post-argument wake. ‘They’re lost without their technology.’

  He explained that the children had been going from room to room, shrieking in disbelief each time they discovered a new piece of equipment that could not work without electricity, their propensity to forget to recharge their various devices finally catching up with them. Evangelia watched her children, bathed in the privilege of never knowing need, and knew this was what her mother had wanted. These spoiled little goblins, exactly as she’d hoped for.

  ‘The computer doesn’t work either,’ Nick called from the study, his voice bordering on hysterics.

  ‘I told you before,’ Peter said. ‘Nothing that uses electricity will work.’

  ‘But it all does,’ Xanthe wailed. ‘All of it.’

  Peter’s eyes rolled in the flicker of a vanilla bean candle, and Evangelia swallowed a smile.

  ‘Oi, you lot, come here.’

  She assembled her weary children around the kitchen table and surveyed them.

  ‘We’re going to try something new.’

  They looked at her suspiciously.

  ‘We’re going to tell each other memories.’

  The children exchanged looks.

  ‘Boring,’ they uttered in unison.

  Peter looked like he agreed.

  ‘No, it won’t be. This is what they used to do back in the village before they had electricity. And all these memories are going to help me write a story about Yiayia’s life.’

  Xanthe sighed heavily. ‘This sounds lame.’

  ‘Sure, it sounds lame. But it’s what we’re going to do. Because the power is out and the night is long and I’m the mother here.’

  The children nodded begrudgingly. Nick’s head slumped to his hands in defeat.

  ‘Good. Now I want you to tell me some of your memories of Yiayia.’

  Nick thought for a moment. ‘Her chin was hairy. Like, really hairy. And some of the hairs were so long I wanted to grab them with my hand and pull and pull and pull until it burst out like one of those magician’s scarves.’

  Evangelia stared at her son. ‘That’s not the kind of memory we’re looking for. Think of things Yiayia would want people to know about her.’

  ‘Her cooking,’ said Xanthe. ‘She was the best cook. Better than you. Even better than thea Lydia.’

  ‘And her cuddles,’ Nick joined in. ‘Her cuddles were really strong like she thought you might die if she let you go.’

  ‘She did,’ Peter said. ‘She thought you kids were going to die all the time. Every cough, every cold. She was convinced everything was coming to get you. It’s a wonder we ever got you to kinder.’

  ‘And her songs,’ Xanthe said. ‘You know that one song she used to sing . . .’

  She started humming it, clapping her hands to the beat. The song pulled at Evangelia’s chest, sending memories of her own childhood skittering about her mind.

  ‘You mean this one?’ she said, and she began to sing.

  Παλαμάκια παίξετε

  κι ο μπαμπάς του έρχεται

  και του φέρνει κάτι τι

  κουλουράκια στο χαρτί.

  ‘Yes, that one!’ Xanthe cried. ‘What does it mean?’

  Evangelia sighed.

  ‘How many years of Greek school and you don’t know what the lyrics mean? It’s a song for little kids. Come on, guys, the words are really simple.’

  They worked through the lyrics together, Evangelia and Peter doing a bulk of the work and coming to the final conclusion that Greek school, and indeed the language of their forebears, was lost to their children.

  Clap your hands,

  his dad is coming

  to bring him something,

  cookies in paper.

  ‘That’s what it means?’ Xanthe looked disappointed. ‘That’s pretty dumb. It sounds much better than it means. Why would Yiayia sing us that? It’s all about a man. And you never gave us cookies in paper, Dad. You never gave us cookies at all.’

  ‘There’s another verse, you know,’ Peter said, ignoring this.

  This surprised Evangelia. ‘Really?’

  Peter nodded. ‘Hardly anyone sings it, but my mum used to sing it to me.’

  He sung the verse to his family. As he did, Evangelia’s eyes filled with tears. This time it was the mother coming home and she would take her small child onto her lap.

  ‘Wait a moment.’

  Evangelia reached down into her bag and pulled out the remnants of her leather-bound journal, the scribbles and photocopies of her half-discoveries wedged between its pages. She wrote down these lyrics. When she was finished, she looked up at her family, their faces bathed in sickly sweet candlelight.

  ‘What else do you remember?’

  27

  DB

  Jonesy.

  DB stared at the blank space. He stared at it some more until his eyes went fuzzy and he remembered he needed to blink. He brought his hands to his face, cupping them over his chin as if to wrench words into existence, but this didn’t work. After some time, he moved his hands to the keyboard and rested them there, hovering, as if waiting for a non-existent light to turn green. My hands are waiting for Godot, he thought to himself, and realised at this moment how very tired he was.

  ‘There’s nothing left now.’

  He started and looked over his screen at Nell. ‘Pardon?’

  ‘All the paperwork is complete. For Madeline’s case. I just have the closing letter to do but other than that, that’s everything. Does this mean it’s all over?’

  That was what it meant, wasn’t it? He nodded. Nell kept watching him.

  ‘I . . .’ she started, then stopped herself.

  She looked exhausted, her skin slack and pale, and crowded with angry red stress blemishes. Her shoulders sagged like empty windsocks, her eyes flat, and he noticed her nails bitten ragged as she held a hand to her chin.

  ‘Do you ever regret things?’ she asked, her voice small. ‘Cases?’

  Of course he did. All the time.

  ‘There’s no use in regretting them,’ DB replied. ‘You just have to try to do things better next time.
’

  His father had told him this once, and it had never really helped. Nell looked bothered by this.

  ‘That’s our luxury, isn’t it?’

  ‘And our curse.’ DB offered her what he hoped was a comforting smile. ‘You did your best. Just remember that.’

  Nell tilted her head to deflect the praise. She neither accepted nor returned the compliment. DB waited a moment more then stood and stretched.

  ‘I’m off now. Got to get to Rudy’s kinder before they lock him in for the night. You heading off?’

  ‘Soon,’ Nell replied. ‘I just need to do the closing letter. Do you want to see it before you go?’

  DB shook his head. ‘I trust you to do it.’

  Nell tilted her chin a moment, then nodded. ‘Enjoy your weekend then.’

  DB closed the empty email and put his computer to sleep. He drove north in the sports car, voracious hip-hop blasting from his car speakers. He bobbed along as he drove, turning it down whenever he pulled to a stop beside other cars. Once he hit the freeway he wrenched the volume as high as it could go, feeling the bass shudder through his muscles and ricochet about his brain. It took nearly two full rotations of the CD to get to Rudy’s kinder. As he turned the corner, he muted the volume, then fumbled to switch to one of Rudy’s CDs. He picked the least mind-numbing and primed it ready for Rudy’s arrival.