Last Day in the Dynamite Factory

by Annah Faulkner

  ‘Finished?’ Diane reaches for his plate.

  Chris slides from the stool. He’d like to say something to acknowledge the chilling significance of what she has told him about her father but doesn’t know what. So he goes to the other side of the bench and puts his arms around her. She stands for a moment, tolerating his embrace, then begins to squirm. Although it’s her standard response to displays of affection outside the bedroom, Chris has never stopped hoping that one day it will be different. At night, with the lights out, her body is his. There’s nothing she won’t do – if he asks.

  He drops his arms and kisses her cheek. ‘I’ll be in my den. We’ll leave at nine.’

  ‘Chris?’ She looks at him with a small frown.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I wonder, is – is everything all right?’

  ‘Yep.’ He shrugs. ‘It is, it’s all right.’

  ‘Only, you seem … preoccupied.’ She searches his eyes, as if behind his glasses they guard a thought she can’t decipher.

  She may be right, but whatever it is, he can’t decipher it either. He’s been aware of a certain restlessness lately, but wonders if it isn’t simply the result of Phoebe leaving home. ‘I’m fine,’ he says.

  In his den he sends a pencil meandering around the blank face of his drawing pad until Diane knocks, a gesture of respect for the possibility he is immersed in work.

  ‘Yep?’

  She comes in with his mug of tea. ‘You forgot.’ On the way out she stoops to pick something off the floor, some rogue particle so minuscule that when she rubs her fingers over the waste basket nothing visible falls.

  ‘Di,’ he says, ‘after Jo’s ashes, why don’t we go somewhere special for lunch?’

  ‘That’s a nice idea. I’m sure Ben will appreciate it.’

  ‘Will you?’

  She smiles.

  ‘I don’t take you out enough.’

  ‘Oh, that doesn’t matter.’

  ‘The kids are grown. Phoebe’s gone. You and I should do more together.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose we should. But right now, don’t let your tea grow cold.’

  For forty years Chris and Ben have come to Coolum to remember Liam. Now they’ve come for Jo.

  Phoebe joins them at Point Perry and the family walks together down to the beach. Ben, with Jo’s ashes in a small, faux Grecian urn, picks his way across the rocks towards the sea. He stands for a moment, then turns and looks at them all, bestowing Phoebe with a brief, melancholy smile. He says she reminds him of Chris’s mother, Alice.

  Chris’s knowledge of his mother is limited to facts and adjectives. He’s tried to construct a more complete picture of her but Jo’s apparent anguish whenever he raised questions made him reluctant to ask. Determined was the most-used description. When she was nineteen, Alice Johansson landed a coveted job as a clothing designer at the Myer Emporium in Melbourne. She left Brisbane, boarded with her father’s cousin near the city, and for two years happily dedicated herself to building a career. Then she fell pregnant. With the support of the family she lived with she left work, took in sewing and, against all the social mores of the time, had her baby. Four months later she was knocked over by a delivery truck in William Street and killed. As next of kin, Jo, and her husband Ben, adopted baby Christopher and took him back to live with them in Brisbane.

  The enduring mystery is his birth father. Jo and Ben did not encourage Chris’s many futile efforts to find Jack Ward, suspecting the name was an invention by Alice to conceal his father’s true identity.

  Ben lifts the urn, but instead of scattering its contents, he flings both the urn and ashes into the belly of a wave. It rises up and curves over like a giant tongue, sucking away Jo’s remains. Ben stands for a moment, watching the swell retreat, then walks slowly back across the rocks, his shoes and trousers blackened by water. No words, no speech. Just gone. Gone, as Liam had gone, dead as Liam is dead.

  ‘That’s it, then,’ Chris murmurs to Diane. She glances at him; her face composed but her eyes troubled. Apparently not closure.

  Back at the car, Ben elects to skip lunch. They buy bottles of juice, farewell Phoebe and begin the drive home.

  The Rover chugs stoically towards Brisbane. It’s old; it rattles and creaks, its suspension is stuffed and lately everything seems to need replacing. Chris knows it’s time for a trade-in but every time he looks at a new car he feels disloyal.

  The return trip is quiet. Archie dozes in the back seat, Diane murmurs intermittently about household trivia. Ben and Chris are silent. It’s hard to know what to say after an occasion so devoid of ceremony.

  ‘Casserole for dinner is it, Ben?’ Chris says eventually, in a feeble attempt at humour.

  ‘Bloody women. The freezer’s full of them.’

  ‘Women?’

  ‘Casseroles. Not that I mind the food, it’s the women …’

  ‘What’s wrong with women?’

  ‘Oh, you know. Keen.’

  ‘Shocking,’ says Chris, glancing sideways at Diane, who doesn’t appear to have heard. ‘I read the other day about a ninety-three year old bloke who married his childhood sweetheart. She was eighty-nine.’

  Ben catches his eyes briefly in the rear-vision mirror. ‘Half his luck.’

  Chris pulls up outside Ben’s house in Red Hill and glances at his watch. ‘I’ll check in at the office, and then how about I come back after work for a beer?’

  Ben nods, delivers a one-fingered salute, and disappears inside.

  Chris drops Archie at the pub and takes Diane home. ‘After I’ve had a beer with Ben, why don’t we go out for dinner?’

  ‘I don’t think Ben will want to, Chris; he didn’t want lunch.’

  ‘I meant just you and me.’

  ‘Isn’t it a bad night to leave Ben on his own? Bring him home and I’ll make something for all of us.’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Chris. ‘Okay. Another night, though, eh?’

  It’s two thirty before he gets to work and he can’t concentrate. Lack of any commemorative speech or reminiscence has left him with a feeling of unfinished business. Maybe Diane was right about closure.

  Tabitha comes into his office waving a piece of paper. She’s taken a phone call from someone in central New South Wales wanting Chris to restore a shearing shed.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Convert it to an operating theatre for a remote hospital?’

  ‘Tabi …’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Mr B. Farm-stays, I think.’

  ‘Great.’ Maybe it’s the day, or the time of year with all its pre-Christmas hype, but Chris can’t generate any enthusiasm for a flight to woop-woop and the cloying smell of lanolin.

  At five thirty he collects a six-pack of beer from Archie at the pub, stops by the fish market for oysters and drives to Ben’s. He’s sitting in the kitchen, contemplating the contents of a Corningware dish. His full mouth and imposing nose have sagged.

  ‘Hello, son.’

  Chris’s heart curls around that word, son. ‘Another casserole?’ he says, uncapping a couple of stubbies.

  Ben sighs. ‘Let’s go up to the shed.’

  They duck beneath the low branches of the jacaranda that Ben refuses to trim, carrying the oysters and beer. Ben’s shed is an old timber garage that smells of wood, shoe polish and machine oil. Here, he made toys and billy-carts for Chris and Liam when they were little and years later for Archie and Phoebe. Chris plonks himself on a 1960s chrome stool with torn red vinyl oozing ancient yellow stuffing. He loves this shed. He loves it because it’s Ben’s and because it is here Ben taught him to work with wood. Chunks of it are stacked neatly along the walls, all awaiting the shape of their destiny. In his teens, Chris imagined he would become a cabinet-maker, but an impressive matriculation suggested a university education and both Jo and Ben encouraged him to consider architecture. Chris looks at his adoptive father with a familiar swell of love. Ben’s life is reflected in this shed. The walls are lined with familiar things and the echo
of familiar sounds. Here, he sawed and chiselled and planed and whittled, knowing that sometime between six thirty and seven in the evening Jo would poke her head out the window and call, Oy, Ben! in time for the seven o’clock news and dinner. For Chris, the shed is an island, a place – unlike his own den and his own cramped workroom – where he can breathe and dream.

  ‘I’ve been going through Jo’s wardrobe,’ Ben says.

  ‘Ah.’ No wonder he looks stuffed. Chris passes him an oyster then tips one into his own mouth, feeling its salty caress. ‘Do you want help?’

  Ben nods. ‘That’d be good.’

  At home, Chris finds Diane constructing a pie on the kitchen bench. She’s made little dents with her thumbs around the edge of the pastry.

  ‘Where’s Ben?’ she says, checking the oven.

  ‘Wants to be on his own. He’s been going through Jo’s things. I said I’d go over tomorrow and give him a hand.’

  ‘I could help.’

  ‘Maybe drop by with lunch?’

  ‘If that’s what you want.’

  ‘What’s in the pie?’

  ‘Rhubarb and raspberry.’

  ‘Heck,’ says Chris. ‘Let’s skip straight to dessert. I could have brought home one of Ben’s casseroles. He’s got a freezer full. Women are lining up.’

  ‘We don’t need Ben’s women’s casseroles.’

  ‘Don’t call them Ben’s women when he’s around. You heard him – he’s being inundated.’

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘Would I what?’

  ‘Would you want another woman, if I died?’

  He stares at her. ‘Bloody hell, Di, you’re not dead. Let’s keep it that way, eh?’ He runs his hand over her back and smiles at the floor. ‘So, you’ve made dinner?’

  ‘Not yet. I thought you could do a barbeque.’

  ‘I could …’ He brightens. ‘But no – let’s have dinner out after all. We can come home and have pie for dessert.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know …’

  ‘Ah, come on, Di. Just you and me. It’d be nice, and I could do with some cheering up. It hasn’t been a great day for me, either.’

  She looks at him for a moment, then her face softens. ‘Of course it hasn’t. We’ll eat out.’

  Frogmore’s Cafe sits on a pontoon in the Brisbane River at Newstead. It is small and chic and renowned for its food. Chris hadn’t expected to get a table at short notice but there was a cancellation.

  Lulled by the liquid murmur of water, candlelight and burgundy-coloured table linen, Chris watches Diane studying the menu. She’s wearing an olive silk sheath and a black silk belt, the heavy pearl earrings he bought for her fortieth birthday and looks, to his eyes, good enough to eat.

  ‘Ah!’ she declares brightly. ‘My favourite. Deep-fried sardines.’

  He laughs. ‘I love that you lust after something so smelly.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’re the most un-smelly person I’ve ever met.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it, but I have to tell you that deep-fried sardines don’t smell like tinned ones.’

  ‘Which you never eat.’

  ‘Which I do eat, but only when you’re not around.’ She tweaks an eyebrow.

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘It’s not necessary to know everything about your spouse. It does no harm to have a secret or two. You’d be bored if you knew everything about me.’

  ‘I doubt that.’ He glances over her shoulder at the approaching waiter. ‘What would you like to drink?’

  ‘What would you like?’

  ‘I asked you first.’

  Diane shakes her head. ‘Kids. I thought I had just two. Very well then: red, but not too heavy. A pinot, perhaps.’

  Chris slaps shut the menu. ‘Done.’

  He follows her gaze to a family of three seated nearby. A small boy – maybe four or five years old – is thumbing some gadget while his parents are engrossed in conversation. The child is an island. They don’t seem to register he’s there.

  ‘Donkey Kong,’ says Diane, with a sad little huff. ‘A game for one. For me, it was noughts and crosses.’

  ‘Not very challenging.’

  ‘I asked my parents for a Scrabble set once, which they duly supplied, but they never played with me. So I played on my own: two hands, three, even four.’

  Chris winces.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she says with a wry smile. ‘I always won.’

  ‘You poor kid.’

  ‘Ah, well. All in the past.’

  ‘Yes, maybe, but the past informs the present.’

  ‘And the present informs the future and that’s what matters.’ She straightens her knife and spoon.

  ‘What would you like for yours?’ he says.

  She considers his question then shrugs. ‘Much the same as we have now. I like the way things are. Grandchildren, of course.’

  Chris coughs and reaches for his water glass. ‘Archie as a father? God help us.’

  Diane smiles. ‘We did well with our children, don’t you think? No arguing in front of them or disagreeing over their discipline. We were always on the same side.’

  ‘We still are.’

  ‘You’re a good man, Chris. A good neighbour, good friend, good father.’

  ‘Heck … thanks, Di.’ He feels himself redden, suspecting he is not as good as she thinks. ‘And you are a good mother – a wonderful mother.’

  ‘Do you … do you really mean that?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do.’

  ‘You don’t know how much it means to hear you say that. I always worried I wasn’t … demonstrative enough. God knows how much I love them but I’m not … tactile, like you. I tried not to let my own upbringing get in the way of Phoebe’s and Archie’s but sometimes I couldn’t help it.’

  ‘You did a great job. They both know how much you love them and they love you. Archie’s always been your number one fan – probably for the very reason you didn’t smother him.’

  ‘Funny, isn’t it? I was probably tougher on him than you were.’

  The wine arrives, along with the starters. Chris forks a plump oyster into his mouth, presses it against his palate and feels it explode gently onto his tongue. Diane crunches her sardines with a lady-like reserve that’s frustratingly attractive. Chris would like to take her in his arms and make love – right here, right now – on the table. But there’s duck and steak to follow, both of which are excellent, and the wine – though a little light for his taste – is making her cheeks flush and her eyes glow and Chris burst with desire. On the way home, in the darkness of the taxi, they sit close, holding hands.

  In the kitchen, Diane carves up the pie, adds a dollop of cream and hands a piece to Chris. As he takes a mouthful of culinary bliss, she touches his arm gently. Her eyes are wide, liquid and hopeful. ‘Chris? Would you …?’

  He pauses mid-chew, his breath suspended.

  ‘Would you play Scrabble with me?’

  He stares at her wordlessly for a moment, then laughs half-heartedly. ‘Yeah. Okay. But you know I’m not good at it. You’ll probably win.’

  Later, spooned beneath the rhythmic beat of the fan, Chris is glad they didn’t make love, not in the conventional sense, anyway. He didn’t try, so he didn’t fail. The night was a success.

  Even if he did lose at Scrabble.

  Ben sits on a low stool in the living room, surrounded by cardboard cartons. A photo album lies open on his knees. Chris looks over his shoulder at Jo’s young face. There’s a bandaid of freckles across her nose and she’s wearing a swirling dress. Chris remembers that dress, remembers Liam plunging himself among its folds. Beside Jo’s photo there’s a larger one of their wedding day. Both sets of parents and Jo’s bridesmaid, her sister Alice. Alice’s face is only half visible, as she has turned to look at the bride and groom. Beside her is Ben’s best man, his cousin, Ian. There are two other photos – both of Liam on the day he died. In one he stands barefoot in the sand, folded over at the
waist, peering upside down between his legs. In the other he’s on his haunches pulling a face for the camera, dragging his mouth up at the corners and his eyes down. Behind him a wave explodes onto the rocks, its crystalline drops winking in the sun. As Chris stares at the photo he can still remember the pain in his leg.

  The day was one of summer’s best. The family, including Ben’s mother, Gran, had gone to Coolum Beach for a picnic. While Ben and Gran sat on a grassy knoll above them, tucking greedily into Jo’s sandwiches and guzzling soft drinks, Chris, Liam and Jo splashed about in a rock pool below. Then Aunty Jo began to feel sick.

  ‘I think it’s sunstroke,’ she said, getting out of the pool and walking a wobbly line back towards the shade. Chris and Liam heard her throwing up, an awful grinding sound followed by a muffled splat.

  ‘Yuck,’ said Liam, and laughed.

  Chris called up to Uncle Ben: ‘Aunty Jo’s sick.’

  Ben dropped his lunch and hurried down.

  A wave hit the rocks then retreated, leaving a small sparkling tower in the sandy strip between the boys and the sea. Liam pointed, clambered out of the pool on his stocky little legs and ran towards the sparkle before another wave could dislodge it. As Chris leaped after him, he heard Gran cry out above, an urgent wail that made his skin crawl. In his rush after Liam, Chris slipped on a rock and opened his shin from knee to ankle. Ignoring the pain and the blood streaming down his leg, he ran after his cousin. Less than thirty seconds separated them, but it was thirty seconds too long.

  As Liam reached the glittering prize, he stumbled and fell.

  Chris watched him go down. It seemed to take forever for the little boy’s chest to swallow the shining spike, and all that escaped him was a sigh, or a grunt, then nothing. He lay face down. Silent. Still. Only his dark curls stirred in the breeze.

  Chris dropped down beside him.

  A lifetime passed.

  He turned Liam onto his back. The spike stood straight up in his chest, blood welling around it in a sluggish foam. Liam, his eyes half open, stared at nothing.

  Like the kangaroo.