by Tess Evans
‘Eileen?’
‘Yes. Yes, Moses.’
‘I have something to tell you—something about Hal.’
A twinge of disappointment, then—‘Hal? What’s wrong with Hal?’
‘He’s done something terrible. Something so terrible I can’t hardly say it.’
Alice moves to her sister’s side and puts a protective hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m here, Eil.’ She looks at Godown. ‘Just say it,’ she says. ‘Tell her straight, whatever it is.’
Godown holds Mrs Mac’s hand as the last of the sun burnishes the ivy. He smells the drifting scent of jasmine. Hears the harsh music of hidden cicadas. All is as it should be on a peaceful suburban summer’s evening. The very ordinariness of the beauty pierces him with a deep melancholy. For the first time in many years he regrets leaving his own country, his own people, to throw in his lot with strangers. He wants, more than anything, to be a boy again, sitting on the front stoop, feeling the smouldering heat of the dying day rising from the pavement. He wants to hear his mother’s voice, singing the old songs, and see Martha Brown, flour-covered arms leaning on her windowsill, calling to her eleven children. ‘Matthias, Luke. Time for dinner. Missy, Jonah, Aaron, Sarah, Micah. You come home. You hear? Sherman, Tecumseh, Bubby. Right now, I say. You too, Lorilee. You leave that no-good boy of yours and come home right now.’ Where were they all now? He’d been sweet on Lorilee once, but she said he was just a kid. And so he was. So he was . . . Now . . . Now he is an ageing man, on the other side of the world, bringing a sack full of heartache to an old and dear friend.
‘Eileen. Mrs Mac. Hal has . . .’ He couldn’t say drowned. ‘Hal has put little Grace in the river. He . . .’
‘In the river? She’s alright. Surely she’s alright.’ Eileen looks from Godown to her sister and back.
‘She’s not alright, is she?’ Alice says quietly.
‘She drowned, Alice. That little girl drowned in the river.’
Godown begins to cry and Mrs Mac puts a tentative arm around his shoulder. She has still not fully comprehended his message. ‘She’ll need dry clothes,’ she says. Then ‘Oh my God! Merciful Father. No!’
The three of them sit on the verandah, oblivious to the passing of time, until Alice becomes aware that the sun has slipped below the horizon, and they are immersed a soft, sad twilight.
She stands up. Shakes herself a little. ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea.’
Godown stirs. ‘Sealie will need me,’ he says. ‘I have to go.’
‘I’ll come with you.’ Mrs Mac makes the offer but when she tries to stand, she sinks back into the chair. ‘My legs won’t let me,’ she tells them, ashamed. ‘I should go with you, but my legs won’t let me.’
Godown looks at her with pity in his eyes. ‘Come tomorrow,’ he says. ‘You’ll need all your strength.’
Alice flashes him a look of gratitude and sees him to the door. ‘Take care,’ she says. She puts the kettle on and helps her sister inside.
Sitting motionless at the kitchen table, Mrs Mac thinks of all the other times she has drunk tea with her sister; all those conversations over the years—about Mrs R, Sealie and Zav. About the arrival of the stranger, Godown Moses Washbourne. About her employer—poor Mr R, who, until he had taken against her, had given her a home long after she was actually needed. ‘If only I’d done something earlier,’ she says, her voice struggling in her throat. ‘Deep down, I knew. And it only got worse. You were right all along. I should’ve done something.’
‘You can’t blame yourself. How could anyone have known something like this would happen?’
‘You did. You said—’
Alice interrupts her. ‘Eileen—stop. I’ll call Father Thomas, if you like.’ She covers her sister’s hand with her own. ‘Or maybe Dr Mason. You’ve had a terrible shock.’
‘No. No doctor. No priest.’
Alice goes to the sideboard, takes a bottle from a silver tray and pours two brandies. ‘Come on. It’ll do you good.’
Mrs Mac gulps the brandy, and closing her eyes, feels its mellowness spread through her body. Wordlessly, she holds out her glass.
‘Eil, you don’t usually . . .’ Alice shrugs and pours them both another measure. ‘If you’re going to get drunk, we’ll do it together.’
‘That poor little mite. Such a beautiful baby. Just like her dad and her aunt Sealie. Same big grey eyes, same dark hair. I think she was beginning to recognise me. I read to her, you know—she’s only a baby but I swear she loves that book about the puppy. Remember? The one we bought at the newsagents?’
Alice sighs. ‘I know. You said she cries—used to cry—when you put it down.’
Eileen pours herself a third brandy and with one movement, drains the glass. ‘Do you know what I had put away for her? For her sixshth birthday. You know what? The Faraway Tree books, that’s what. She’ll never know Moonfashe, or Shilkie,’ she mourned. ‘Or the Angry Pixshie.’ She looks into her sister’s face and tries to focus, but the familiar features are strangely fuzzy. ‘I can’t bear it. It’s too much to bear.’
I like the sound of the Angry Pixshie. He (or is it she?) sounds a lot more interesting than a Moonfashe. But then I could be wrong. I don’t have a whole lot to go on.
3
MEANWHILE, WHAT OF MY FATHER? Since my death, he had endured three more days of enemy bombardment. There was no pause in the Tet offensive to mourn one small, faraway loss. They were in death’s own territory, and couldn’t afford to give ground.
It was decided that Zav should be flown to the base at Nui Dat before he was told. The officers couldn’t predict his reaction, and didn’t want to take unnecessary risks in the midst of battle. When it was deemed safe, when there was space in a chopper, they explained that he was needed as an escort for the walking wounded.
Zav had mixed feelings as he watched the Medevac team strap stretchers to the sides of the helicopter. To be out of this hellhole, even for a day . . . But how could he leave his mates? He couldn’t. Not in the middle of all this.
‘Request permission to stay, Sir,’ he asked the officer in charge.
‘Permission denied.’
‘But, Sir. They need me here.’
‘The war will continue regardless of your presence, soldier. Board now.’
Zav was wedged between a young man with his arm in a splint and an older man with a bandage covering one eye. They both appeared to be drugged, the young man looking like he was suffering from a hangover and the older one slumped so that his head was on Zav’s shoulder. It was cramped enough in the chopper but when Zav tried to move to a more comfortable position, the older man groaned. At the sound, Zav froze and sat immobile, hardly daring to breathe for the forty-five minutes it took to reach Nui Dat.
The chopper was met by a medical team who quickly assessed their patients and bore them off for treatment. Zav, after assisting with the stretchers, was told to report to Captain Woods. Woods was not his commanding officer, but he had a good reputation among the ranks and Zav knew him by sight.
The Captain was sitting off the canteen in a partitioned room that served as his office. He was clean-shaven and his uniform fitted his small neat frame surprisingly well. Nevertheless, his face was dripping with perspiration, and there were dark patches on his shirt. Another officer, a plump, shy-lookingyoung man, a few years older than Zav, stood a little to one side, the crosses on his collar signifying his calling.
They want me to go with the padre to the hospital, Zav thought, standing to attention.
‘At ease, soldier.’ The Captain’s voice was kind and he looked at Zav through slightly misty glasses. ‘Sit down, son. I have something to tell you.’
Puzzled, Zav sat in the chair that was hastily thrust at him by the padre. ‘Sir?’
After telling the tragic story, Captain Woods stood up and placed his hand on my father’s shoulder. ‘Take all the time you need, son.’ He was concerned at the young soldier’s lack of emotion. ‘You’re in shock, right now. I’ll
leave you with the padre.’
Zav turned to stare at the pudgy face. ‘Would you like to say a prayer?’ the padre asked, evading the unblinking regard of those strange, grey corpse-eyes. He was just out of the seminary, and had not been prepared for this.
Zav continued to stare, now at his trembling hands which he could not control. He held one with the other as though trying to keep it from falling apart. The young padre began to pray, then stopped. ‘We’ll get you out, mate. Soon. Get you home to your family.’
A shadow of irony passed over my father’s grimy face. ‘Family. Let’s see. Would that include my daughter? My murdering father, perhaps?’
‘I’ll get you a beer.’ The padre returned with two cans of Victoria Bitter and they sat in silence as Zav felt the familiar sensation of the cold liquid sliding down his throat. He drained the last of the beer and looked thoughtfully at the empty can. ‘I think I’d better get drunk,’ he said after some consideration. He measured the other man with his eyes. ‘I don’t want to get drunk alone.’
As he and the padre drank steadily into the night, Zav reeled back and forth from disbelief to anger, from grief to guilt and finally, into blessed oblivion. But the Zav that was given this terrible news was not the Zav who had left Australia, fit, strong and full of youthful optimism. It wasn’t the Zav who had felt the familiar thrill of adventure as he boarded the plane to South-east Asia. He, Monty, Scottie and the others had cracked nervous jokes, speculated with black humour, but despite their training, they had little concept of their fate.
When they were drunk enough, the padre helped Zav to a bed, before falling into his own. He had forgotten his night prayers, but there are many ways of praying.
It took Zav three days to get home. The airport at Tan Son Nhat had been under fire and the wounded were first to be evacuated. He finally found himself on a Hercules transport plane, sitting uncomfortably against the wall of its hollowed-out body. No matter how he sat, he could feel the hard metal at his back, the straps cutting into his shoulders. The noise was deafening. His whole body vibrated and his thoughts churned, thick and heavy, like concrete in a mixer.
Unspeakably weary, he waited an hour in the tropical heat of Darwin for a commercial flight to Melbourne. After the Hercules, his seat in the 707 was like an armchair, and he finally fell into a deep but troubled sleep.
Disembarking at Essendon airport, his senses were assaulted by normality. The sky was his home sky, the air clean and dry. Voices around him spoke English in pleasant, conversational tones. The floors were mopped and the windows wide and shiny. Lightly tanned girls wore long skirts or skimpy summer dresses. Their pale lipstick enhanced their kohl-ringed eyes and they tossed long, clean hair and strode through the airport as though they owned the world. Families off on holiday smiled at each other and ate ice-creams in the ignorance of peace. A well-dressed man with a briefcase murmured an apology as he bumped into Zav who stood staring around him with a frightening sense of unreality. How could all these people act as if the world were a good, safe place? As if, only hours away, there were no mortars or broken villages or wasteful death? His gaze alighted upon two lovers, honeymooners, perhaps, looking at each other with delight. As though they had a right to be happy. Zav could see himself and Kate in their demeanour, but couldn’t reconnect with the feeling. He had imagined this scene so often and now the imagined joy was nowhere to be found. All he felt was weariness and nausea. He understood that he was rooted to this spot forever, having neither the will nor the capacity to move. Resigned to his fate, he stood, clinging to his bag, unaware that his uniform was drawing both pity and contempt.
A middle-aged woman approached him. ‘Murderer,’ she hissed, thrusting a pamphlet into his hands.
‘Thank you,’ he said, accepting the pamphlet with innate courtesy. ‘You must have mistaken me for my father.’
‘Leave him alone!’ Sealie, who’d been running towards him, pushed the woman aside and flung herself into his arms. ‘Oh, Zav. Thank God you’re back.
‘Zav,’ she sobbed. ‘Zav . . .’ She stopped mid-sentence. His rigid body refused her and she stepped back to look at his face. A stranger looked back at her, stern and distant. ‘Zav?’ She was confused. She had expected to see his boy face—the forlorn, twelve-year-old face, that had fought back tears in the cupboard under the stairs.
‘We’d better get moving,’ he said. ‘They’ve given my luggage priority.’
On the way home in the taxi, Sealie gave directions. The driver tried to start a conversation. ‘My nephew’s a Nasho. Off to Vietnam in a couple of months.’ Zav stared out the window, a slight grunt his only acknowledgement. After that, no-one spoke.
Sealie tried to take his hand, but Zav pulled away. Perplexed, she looked at him, still seeking her brother, but the thin, weary face gave no clue as to where he might be.
Zav watched as they sped through the familiar suburban landscape—new houses, occupying large blocks on the outskirts of Melbourne. Brick veneer, picture windows and nascent gardens, many with pampas grass waving its feathers in the hot north wind. Small shopping strips—a milk bar, fish ’n’ chip shop, Commonwealth or State Bank, a haberdashery or wool shop, maybe. A butcher’s, a green grocer’s, an accountant’s office. A few women in shorts or long cotton dresses pushing prams, guiding toddlers, carried their shopping in baskets or string bags.
Superimposed on this scene was another. Zav is in a market crowded with small dark-haired women, many carrying twin baskets across their shoulders on a bamboo pole. They walk lightly, on the balls of their feet, and the baskets bounce gently to the rhythm of their gait. They speak a language with a harsh, foreign cadence, and barter fiercely with the sellers, whose wares are displayed on blankets on the ground. The air is humid and Zav can feel the sweat running down his face as delicate, fine-limbed children jostle for his attention. Úc Dai Loi, they call, hands outstretched. Úc Dai Loi number one.
Zav was jolted back to the present as they approached Yarra Falls. There were the tennis courts, en-tout-cas swirling in the wind; there was St Theresa’s, the children lining up after lunchbreak; rows of workers’ cottages, their bold colours reflecting the nostalgia of Italian migrants; the old glove factory, the pool, the overly ornate town hall, the sound of a tram-bell. A whole way of life assailed his consciousness. Only days ago he would have killed . . . he pulled himself up . . . he would have given anything to be driving down this street.
The taxi turned into River Street and then into the short cul-de-sac where Hal had built his house. Zav sat in a daze, while Sealie paid the driver. She opened the door.
‘Come on. We’re home.’
Zav found he couldn’t move. He willed his legs to swing out of the car, but they stayed exactly where they were. He looked down at his recalcitrant boots and frowned. They were very dusty. He wondered idly why the army set so much store on boot polish.
‘Come on, Zav.’ Godown was there, taking his arm. ‘You can’t stay here. The taxi man’s got a job to do.’
Zav had spent nights dreaming of his return. He saw himself calling out as he approached their little flat in Carlton. ‘Kate. It’s me. Gracie. It’s Daddy.’ Kate, blonde hair flying, holding his daughter, running down the street to meet him. He, inhaling the freshness of them, holding them close. Laughing at the sheer joy, the relief of home.
Godown extricated him from the taxi and Zav shuffled on the big man’s arm, up the path to the door of his father’s house. There was no-one to greet him.
‘Kate’s inside with Mrs Mac,’ Sealie murmured as they climbed the steps to the front door. ‘She hasn’t been able to bring herself to go back to the flat or to her mum’s.’
Sealie couldn’t tell him that Kate’s mother had refused to have anything to do with the son of the man who killed her granddaughter. The young woman needed her mother but she needed her husband more.
Zav found his wife huddled on the sofa in the darkened lounge room. As he entered, Mrs Mac stood up and made as if to hug hi
m, then, remembering her place, touched him briefly on the arm and left the room.
Zav looked down at the crumpled figure on the sofa. He tried to feel as he knew he ought to, but the terrible aloneness that filled him left no room for other thoughts. He steeled himself.
‘Kate,’ he said. ‘Katie.’ He lifted her up and cradled her in his arms. She was so light he feared she might break. ‘Kate.’
She began to weep wildly, choking on great ugly sobs. Howling in raw pain. Beating him on the chest. He stroked her head. She’s cut her hair, he thought, bewildered. Her lovely hair. He recoiled. What sort of person was he? His daughter was dead. Murdered by his father. He was holding his grieving wife in his arms. And all he could think of was her hair.
Kate felt the recoil, fleeting though it was, and somewhere in her shattered consciousness she was aware that the Zav she had waited for, the Zav who had returned, was not the Zav who’d left. The Zav who’d left would never have recoiled from her. This Zav held her differently; his body no longer melded to hers. There was something mechanical in his touch, gentle though it was.
She looked up at him. ‘We can go and see her.’
Zav had seen so much death and destruction that he knew he could take no more. ‘I can’t,’ he whispered. ‘I just can’t.’
At that moment, deep down, she knew she had lost him.
Zav shut the bathroom door with relief. He felt the house closing in on him and had to control the urge to flee. Here, observed only by the blank-faced tiles, he could have some time alone. Kate’s need was sucking away his already depleted energy, and the strain threatened to overwhelm him. He ran some warm water and picked up his razor, the one Hal had bought him when he began to shave. It was heavy, and balanced nicely in his hand. Someone had put in a new blade. He lathered his face, lifted his chin and stretched his cheek as his father had taught him. Nice slow strokes, son. Keep the skin taut or you’ll end up nicking yourself. His hand began to tremble. In that rare moment of intimacy, neither of them could ever have imagined the pain Hal would cause his son. Zav blinked back tears. He couldn’t afford to break down. They were relying on him. Shit! He felt the nick and watched the trickle of blood run down his chin and on to his shirt. He watched its progress in horror. There’d been so much blood when Monty went down. Insects had gorged on the red globules until the last traces were washed away in the warm, tropical rain.
