The Book of Ordinary People

by Claire Varley

  Lydia’s face brightened.

  ‘You don’t remember what happened to the dragon? Eva, she slayed it. She had no choice. You were certain it kept coming back. She tried the mati, ikoni, everything she could think of, and when that didn’t work, she burst in one night dressed like the tin man. Pot on her head, hiding behind this big old saucepan lid like a shield. She was armed with the mattock from the garden and she fought that dragon like she was Saint George himself or something. The poor dragon never had a chance. She buried it in the garden and we had a bumper crop of tomatoes that season. How do you not remember that?’

  Evangelia frowned, watching the light fall across her sister’s face. Somewhere inside things shifted ever so slightly and a glimmer of something forgotten began to shine through.

  ‘You want stories, I’ve got stories,’ Lydia said, and she held out her hand to her sister.

  34

  Patrick

  The journey was longer this time, now that he didn’t have a station van to drive him. As the suburbs passed before him, Patrick realised he’d rarely ventured this far into the outer north. Nor had North Facing Window, which was a salient point of note. He would have to make an effort to get out this way more if the column truly wanted to reflect the people it claimed to. He watched the factories through the window, hard at work manufacturing all kinds of things he didn’t understand. Car parts, maybe, though who knew if they made those anymore. After a while he pulled out his mobile and called Harry.

  ‘Patrick! What’s up? Did you have a flutter?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Cup Day. Yesterday. I picked the nag.’

  ‘Oh. No. I completely forgot about that. I’ve been busy. Look, I need your help.’

  ‘Christ, you’re not in the lock-up again, are you?’

  ‘No, no, nothing like that. There’s a show I need you to cover.’

  ‘Art show? That’s not really what I meant –’

  ‘If not you then someone else at the station? Maybe you could give someone a nod in the right direction?’

  Harry whistled softly.

  ‘Please, Harry. Can you please just do this for me? It’s a really important show. Think The Field at NGV. Think the Heide Circle. It’s about Australia and our history and how we’ve got it all a bit wrong. Plus, I reckon there’ll be some controversy.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘What kind of controversy?’

  ‘The vegan gyros kind.’

  ‘People do like controversy . . . Look, I can’t make you any promises but I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘That’s all I need. Thank you. It’s worth it, I promise.’

  ‘Do I bother asking why?’

  ‘Why do any of us do anything, Harry? Sometimes it’s just time to stop being the bowling ball.’

  Harry clicked his tongue at the other end of the phone.

  ‘You’ve got me there. Send me the details.’

  Because he didn’t have an appointment, Patrick was forced to lurk about the waiting area until Sarah eventually emerged from one of the consulting rooms. Her eyes narrowed when she recognised him and she looked over her shoulder as if seeking back-up.

  ‘What do you want?’

  Patrick rose quickly, his hands outstretched as if to fasten her there.

  ‘You wouldn’t return my calls –’

  ‘Why would I ever want to do that again?’

  ‘It’s just I need to ask you a favour.’

  Sarah looked at him with utter incredulity.

  ‘A favour? After what you did to my clients? Do you realise the sense of trust you jeopardised for me? Not to mention my professional standing. I encouraged them to participate and –’

  ‘I understand and I’m so, so sorry. But please just hear me out. I need to speak to them. To your clients.’

  Sarah shook her head in disbelief.

  ‘You have no clue. We’ve lost contact with Maziar. Or “Ali” as you dubbed him. We’ve no idea where he is now. And Elham – the woman with the child – they’re back in detention. Their application was rejected. These are real people.’

  Patrick felt himself pale. ‘Is this my fault?’

  He must have looked as horrified as he felt because Sarah’s face slackened.

  ‘Elham, no. There were issues with the information she provided but we’re hoping she can make a special appeal and change the decision. But Maziar, maybe that’s on you. I mean, it happens. People disengage for whatever reason. Sometimes they move, sometimes they don’t need us anymore, sometimes they find someone who can provide more appropriate support. But I don’t imagine your stupid stunt helped.’

  Patrick sighed, momentarily relieved before realising his culpability changed nothing for either of these people.

  ‘What about the other woman? Aida. The one with the excellent English?’

  Sarah eyed him. ‘What about her?’

  ‘Please, can I have her number?’

  ‘You’re joking right? You know I can’t provide a client’s information. It’s illegal, not to mention unethical.’

  ‘Could you call her then?’ he pressed, and he told her what he wanted.

  Sarah regarded him sceptically.

  ‘Please,’ Patrick repeated. ‘Just ask her. That’s all I ask of you. It’s either that or another North fucking Window about some guy who runs a suburban souvlaki shop, and no one wants to read about that.’

  Sarah looked away for a moment. She drummed her fingers across the file in her hand.

  ‘Fine. I’ll ask. And if it’s no, that’s it. You leave us alone. Happy?’

  Patrick smiled gratefully. ‘More than you can imagine.’

  And he was, sort of, in a way that he hadn’t been for months. On his way back to the boxy apartment in Thornbury, Patrick reviewed the list he’d written a few days earlier. His counsellor had suggested he do this, create lists of things that kept him awake at night so that they’d keep until the morning, and this list had turned into a list of problems, and another of possibilities, and a final list of things that could be done in order to somehow in the tiniest way right the trail of wrongs he’d left behind him. He made a gentle mark next to Sarah’s name and scanned the remaining items. The property manager had been contacted, the sideboard had been picked up, and now all that was left was to buy a plane ticket. This time – the whole time – Seymour would know exactly where he was. And while this wouldn’t fix things, because in life often things might never be fixed, it did create a pathway through which he could seek bit by bit something very much like amends.

  35

  DB

  Jonesy!

  Sorry for the radio silence. Life has been busy and not much time for the old email etc. So much to catch you up on. Here’s a brief snippet: I’ve been off work for a month recovering from a partial patellectomy – that’s right, half my kneecap removed and I’m off my feet until it heals properly. Turns out I had more than enough annual leave once the sick leave wore off.

  But it’s not all been lying down for me. We’re moving sticks to a new place out near Sylvie’s parents. Should be in by Christmas if we can get all our junk into boxes in time. Walking distance to Rudy’s kinder – once I’m walking again – and plenty of train time to catch up on my reading once I’m back at work. The mortgage has shed half its body weight and we’ll probably have another baby now that we can afford it. To be completely honest, having a sibling might be good for Rudy. He’s moved on from death now and is fascinated with birth, so that’s an omen if anything was. I hear what you’re thinking. We will probably become those boring people who live in the suburbs with all their children doing boring suburban things, but that’s not the scariest thing in the world, now is it? On some days it even looks a bit exciting.

  On a final note, because I’ve really got to run (ho ho), when are you planning on
making a visit here? There’s a spare room in the new place, at least until there’s a baby, and email is just so impersonal, isn’t it? Put us on your travel list and let’s catch up face to face. It’s been far too long, my friend, and I’ve so much I’d love to tell you.

  More soon and don’t be a stranger.

  Ben.

  36

  Evangelia

  Initially, Lydia had her reservations.

  ‘That’s not how it’s done,’ she told Evangelia down the phone line. ‘What will people say?’

  ‘I don’t give a shit, Lydia,’ Evangelia replied brightly. ‘It’s how we’re doing it. Bring your children and that fucking bouzouki, and we’re going to do it our way.’

  It had begun the night of the cemetery visit, and there had been so much more to follow. She had started with Lydia, stories spilling from her over bottles of wine. From this, Evangelia found names, numbers, details of houses where acquaintances and relatives might still be found. Her mother’s neighbours, the owners of the shops she used to visit, the friends long forgotten and far away. Evangelia sat by bedsides and in trickles of sun in nursing home courtyards, wading patiently through the confusion of today to where long-ago memories lay as sharp and clear as diamonds. She built it, brick by brick, the story of her mother. She wrote it gradually, with false starts and dead ends, sitting at the table by the brick wall where she knew for sure her mother had pressed her palm all those years ago. Her phone pinged with messages of clarification and discovery shuttled to and from her sister. And one evening she overheard two staff members talking about the café’s previous owner, the son of a foreman who had worked his way up and eventually bought out the building, and she had followed this lead and found a middle-aged man who very much remembered the story his father used to tell of the woman who had waltzed into his factory and demanded he give her a job.

  Then the real work began. She advertised in the Greek language papers and pinned up an invitation on the noticeboard at the church. Some of the women had looked on in concern, because it was not, after all, how things were done, but Evangelia didn’t care.

  ‘I do hope you’ll be there,’ she said, beaming at them, and soon the news was shooting out across the tendrils of the Greater Northern Metropolitan Grapevine.

  Did you know for Xanthoula Georgiou’s twelve-month mnimósino her daughters are throwing a party! Yes, a party. I don’t know where – at some café, I think. Of course I’m going, aren’t you? Whoever misses this is going to regret it forever! Holy panagia mou . . .

  She accosted the Italian one morning after service and made him promise three times that he would be available to bless the gravesite after the mass.

  ‘I promise, I promise,’ he said, his hands shielding him from her stern glare. ‘Rain, hail or shine?’ she demanded, and he nodded weakly as he took the full envelope she thrust at him.

  On the day of the service, she made her family stand before her, preening and de-fluffing and adjusting their clothing. All the appropriate shade of black, even if Peter’s shirt strained a bit across his girth.

  ‘My goddamn beautiful family,’ she announced, and made them pose for photos.

  She watched the liturgy like a hawk, her fist clenching in victory when the Italian recited her mother’s name. Then she waited by the narthex until he was finished and shepherded him to the car.

  ‘Let the pappá take the front seat, Petro,’ she informed her husband, bobbing about until the Italian fastened his seatbelt, then closing the passenger door firmly.

  She led the procession of mourners to her mother’s gravesite, waiting patiently while the Italian swung the incense and sang his prayers. She sought out the words now etched across the surface of her mother’s headstone: Xanthoula Georgiou, good young, good old. She made her family who they are. It wasn’t how things were normally done, but it was damn well how they’d done it. Her mother surveyed the whole thing from the little memorial photo in the centre of the headstone. It was the perfect image, discovered by Lydia at the bottom of a neighbour’s drawer, her mother at the cusp of ageing, her face still lined with the determination of youth as the wisdom of age began to blossom. And there was warmth too, her love for her people radiating out into the cemetery. She would have liked this, Evangelia thought, and that was what mattered.

  After the blessing, she released the Italian of his duties, and the mourners piled into their cars. Then they pulled out one by one and formed a long snaking procession towards their final destination. The Foreman’s Quarters had rearranged the tables so that they skirted the perimeter, leaving a large space in the middle. Evangelia waited anxiously, her body pressed against the brickwork, as guests slowly arrived. They kept coming. Lydia, Darren and the children, who she parked in the corner and instructed to start playing. The families of her mother’s siblings, her father’s siblings, cousins and second cousins. Kat was there with her children and she had dragged along Nina, already back from her trip overseas, which touched Evangelia far more than she expected. There was Carole, nodding to her with Gwen and Sita beside her. Terry, thankfully, was nowhere in sight. And there were others too, people she didn’t recognise, draped in their dark mourning scarves and finest jewellery. Perhaps they were friends of her mother’s, but perhaps not. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that people were here. They milled about, sipping their port as they entered and pausing before the large images of her mother displayed about the walls. As a mother, as a daughter, as a grandmother, as herself. All the faces she’d worn in her seven and a half decades on earth.

  They picked at the meat platters, loading their plates with mini quiches and sausage rolls, dolmades and olives, and craning their necks to see what would emerge next from the kitchen. Evangelia’s children promenaded around the room, accepting compliments from strangers and not understanding any of the Greek spoken to them, as their talented cousins played perfectly in the corner. Once everyone was settled, Evangelia pressed her palm into the brickwork, took a deep breath and pulled the sheets of paper from her handbag. This wasn’t how it was normally done, but this was how she was doing it. She cleared her throat and began to read.

  On a cold winter’s morning in 1975, Xanthoula Georgiou set out her family’s breakfast for when they rose, pulled on her best – and only – black coat, marched into the local brickworks and demanded they give her work. Her husband was injured fighting for freedom and he needed to recover, she told the startled foreman, so she would take on his work until he did so. The foreman looked at this tiny woman, all elbows and angles with little strength about her. He would later tell his son that he had laughed then, big and unyielding from the bottom of his stomach, and then told her he had no work for someone of her size. Xanthoula had planted her feet, her palms pressed flat against the brickwork as she stood her ground. ‘Tha mou thóseis thouleiá.’ You will give me work. The foreman laughed again, softer now, and uncertain. ‘I understand your problem,’ he said, because really he did, ‘but we haven’t any work fit for a woman. Perhaps my wife can give you some psomi to take home with you?’ Xanthoula scoffed at this, staring him hard in the eye. Then she rolled up her sleeves, her bony elbows set for work, and marched into the factory proper.

  The men, already hard at work lifting sandbags and packing in clay, froze. There were never women on the factory floor. Some recognised her, Andreas Georgiou’s wife, and wondered if their friend and co-worker was dead. Why else would his wife be on the factory floor? Unless she had gone mad, which they knew sometimes happened to women. Too much time in the kitchen, not enough fresh air. The stress of womanhood was a well-known phenomenon, everyone knew that, something to do with the ovaries and time. It made them bitter and shrill and argumentative and nothing like they were meant to be. One worker would often tell the story of how he had crossed himself, muttering a little prayer for the mad woman, then almost fell to the floor when she proceeded to lift a huge sack of sand and cart it about the place. �
��Like this?’ she asked the foreman, pouring it into the mixer. ‘Nai,’ he muttered, beside himself.

  The foreman was uncertain. If word got out there was a woman doing the same work as men – a mother, no less, for Andreas often talked about his small children – it would be very embarrassing for the foreman and he feared his boss would fire him. But the foreman, who had a wife and a mother and plenty of sisters as well, knew from the determined look in her eye that Andreas’s wife would not leave until she got what she wanted. So he sought a compromise. ‘I can’t pay you his wage,’ he said, wringing his hands at the look of it all. ‘How would the other men feel to be paid the same as a woman? But you are half the size of Andreas, so I will give you half the money.’ Xanthoula did not like this arrangement but she had haggled enough in the marketplace to know a deal when she saw one. ‘It is done then,’ she said, and she stuck out her hand to shake. The foreman shook her hand hurriedly, worried the other men would see this and think him weak. And for the next six months Xanthoula worked twice as hard as any man for half the money. Because of this, her husband Andreas could rest his back properly for the first time in fifteen years and every single night they had enough food on the table and enough money in their pockets to pay the bills.

  Two decades later the church you just sat in was in turmoil. A new priest from Athens had arrived with the blessing of the Patriarch in Constantinople himself, and rumour got around that he had been an informant during the dictatorship, weeding out anti-junta republicans. This left half the congregation in despair – a traitor administering their communion and christening their babies? A man who may well have caused the torture of so many of their fellow countrymen, of their own family members, no less? No thank you, they would prefer someone else, and they nominated an up-and-coming young priest from Parramatta instead. But the other half of the congregation, they knew gossip when they heard it, and if this man was good enough for the Patriarch he was good enough for them. No one knew how to fix this problem. Families were fracturing and service had become a mess, with half the congregation sitting in protest in the church courtyard, where their chosen young priest performed the rituals in the early morning sun.