An Open Swimmer Page 6

  Jerra met eyes he knew, letting them blink by, clacking up the footpaths amidst the stink of rotting flowers, fluorescent windows of scaled, headless fish, the chatter of money in tills, on bars, in pockets, gutters.

  Faces in the street had that grin. That tight sucking back of the lips. He was grinning, aching. His father was grinning, hand tight on the throttle. And the turrum was dying. In murmurs. But he had worked hard for it. He ached. Wasn’t that enough?

  He caught the grass-green bus home. Next door, the man was scraping up the turds with a shovel. A disgrace, it was, and he didn’t even own a dog! Jerra grinned, ran his hand along the sucked-in cheek of the dented VW, and went inside, his clothes reeking of cashews from Coles, the newsprint and cement.

  ‘Books,’ his mother murmured, smoothing the wrinkles of his bed. ‘Always used to have your beak in a book. Ever since I can remember. Robinson Crusoe, The Swiss Family Robinson, that little skinny book you read at school . . . here, The Old Man and the Sea. A writer, you said, that’s what, Mum. And you’n Auntie Jewel would sit out there in the afternoons, planning your career. Scribbling those little poems. Didn’t know who was worse, you or Jewel. Those funny little love things she used to write. She was a dear.’

  Petals fall like scales onto my hand . . .

  Jerra half-smiled, feeling the wall.

  ‘You used to read everything, once. News, pamphlets, magazines. Even the Digest.’

  ‘Yes.’ He smiled truly. ‘Even the Digest.’

  ‘Why is it you don’t read any more, Jem? The hardbacks, all the old writers. What about Laurie . . . Laurie, no Lowry, the drunken bum.’ She found Lunar Caustic on his shelf and worried it out. ‘That’s him.’

  ‘Dunno, Mum.’ Jerra didn’t look. The books turned him cold. ‘It just wasn’t real. You kid yerself, sometimes.’

  ‘You used to say it was more real than anything.’ She shrugged, pulling at her cardigan. She gazed at the curling photos, dusty on the wall, and pointed. ‘Where was that again, love?’

  ‘Near Esperance. I forget.’

  ‘Lovely.’

  ‘Yeah. It was.’

  ‘Who took the picture?’

  ‘Sean. Sean did. He had the camera.’

  He glanced out onto the street.

  ‘Haven’t seen our Sean for a while.’

  Sprinklers rattled.

  ‘Have you seen him since the trip?’

  ‘No,’ he lied.

  Coming back from the river, he had gone into a bar. Lunch time, and it was crowded with smoke and the smells of powdered bodies swirling in the crush. Office girls laughed. A race-caller jabbered. He bought a beer and found a red table with Vinyl seats. As he nudged the bitter foam, Sean came in, hesitated, then recovered and sat down.

  ‘G’day, mate,’ he said cheerily.

  ‘Hullo, Sean.’

  ‘How’s things?’ He flicked back his tie. The name tag looked impressive and a bit pathetic.

  ‘Orright.’ Jerra pushed a soggy coaster.

  ‘Got a job, yet?’

  ‘Nah.’ He smiled. ‘How’s the shirts?’

  ‘Well as can be expected, I s’pose. Which reminds me, I’m due back.’ He stood, leaving a handmark on the hot red of the Laminex. ‘Listen, I’ll drop by soon and we’ll go out somewhere on a weekend, orright?’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Jerra said into his beer.

  Then only the smoke and the races. And the beer was awful.

  ‘ . . . can always remember it. Auntie Jewel would never have forgiven me for sending him there. Such a rough mob at that school.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Auntie Jewel.’

  ‘Talk about being sent.’

  ‘Well, Sean’s Dad thought it was for the best.’

  ‘His best. Runs in the blood.’

  Through sand.

  ‘Everything’s alright between you and Sean, isn’t it, Jem? Nothing happened while you were away?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Ah, it’s okay, I suppose. We just . . .’

  ‘What?’ She picked a piece of fluff from his jumper.

  ‘Oh, I dunno. It’s not the same, any more.’

  ‘Oh, Jerra, what happened?’

  ‘Nothing. Hard to explain.’

  She ran a palm along the shelves.

  ‘All those years. Since you were babies.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  She sucked her top lip.

  ‘Wasn’t it a good trip? You did come home early.’

  ‘Oh, it gets to the point where it’s a bit of a drag. Seems you spend all your time sitting round keepin’ the fire going.’

  ‘I’d better get tea on.’

  He lay back on the bed.

  ‘Don’ think it’s all me. You don’t know him any more, Mum. I don’t either.’ Or maybe I do, he thought. Only too well.

  ‘Jerra.’

  ‘All those years, his old man prancing around, droppin’ her in hospital every time they slipped up. Having him here, like an adopted son, or something. Sean doesn’t give a turd. You raised somebody who doesn’t wanna remember. We’re dirt!’

  ‘I’m going downstairs for the tea.’

  ‘Downstairs! I wish you’d sell this place, if it was ever bought. We don’t belong here.’

  ‘You speak for yourself. Your father and I do.’

  ‘’Cause you were weak? Or was it more complicated than that? It stinks. Maybe we are a bit dirty? It makes yer feel grubby.’

  ‘What rubbish you talk!’ His mother blinked. ‘All this lying around has softened your head. Come down and peel the potatoes.’

  ‘There’s things you haven’t told me, isn’t there?’

  ‘Jerra, of course not!’

  ‘Is it about this house?’

  ‘Don’t even know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘No, neither do I.’

  ‘That’s not a bad poem,’ he said.

  ‘A bit soppy?’

  ‘Only a bit. The sand bit’s good.’

  He mouthed the words, and she stretched in the sun.

  ‘The sand bit, yes,’ Auntie Jewel whispered.

  The day he came home from the beach, after the police and the ferrety reporters.

  ‘Sean, she’s dead.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Sean closed the door of his bedroom in Jerra’s face.

  Falling against the wall, sick with it, Jerra cried out.

  ‘You called for your mother.’

  ‘Get fucked, Jerra. Just get fucked.’

  ‘You’re a bastard! Sean! You don’t bloody care!’

  Laughing. Behind the door. Jerra wanted to see his face.

  ‘So she’s dead.’

  My love seeps like water through sand . . .

  Buried alive.

  Papers and cans rolled along the tacky bitumen. Seagulls scrabbled over a pizza, picking at the vomitty stuff, pulling it out of each other’s beaks. Goatee-ed surfers were sitting on the bonnets of their vans. Boards piled up on racks, bright, glossy. A paunchy man with a metal detector combed the sand, stooping, straining it through his fingers.

  There was a hole punched in the bin next to Jerra. Around the rusty puncture was scratched:

  Salt crusted the cyclone wire of the fences. People were leaning, talking, brushing the bleached hair from their eyes.

  ‘I s’pose they told you about last night,’ said the old lady on the bench next to him. She was chewing, chewing. There was nothing in her mouth, not even her teeth. She chewed a bit more.

  ‘No.’ Jerra put his feet up on the fence in front. He watched the swell breaking through the diamond pattern of the wire.

  ‘Young people. Don’t know what to do with themselves.’

  He knew she was including him. He had the hair.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘That young boy. In the telephone box.’

  ‘What did he do?’ He felt he had to ask.

  ‘Went crazy. Kept sayin’ things. That they’d done to him. That no one
would help him. Kept yellin’ out, “Listen – listenlistenlisten —”’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Blew his own head off. In the telephone box, over there.’

  ‘God —’

  ‘If someone don’t put ’em away, they do it themselves.’ She chewed.

  Jerra kicked the bin. It toppled over, spilling its slop. The birds came.

  Graffiti. Etched into the red paint. A few people watched from the pinball joint. Jerra opened the door. The clockface of the dial, the chipped receiver, dangling like a tendon. DIAL THE WORLD DIRECT with cigarette-burn punctuation. There were different graffiti on the glass and the ceiling. A chip of sky showed.

  Jerra walked past the shopfronts, aching. On a picket fence, somebody had sprayed:

  LIFE IS A SHIT SANDWICH

  the more bread you get

  THE EASIER IT IS TO TAKE

  And he wondered if the bloke had seen it. Maybe he’d written it. Sean would’ve had something smart to say, poor bugger that he was.

  Silence nicked and sliced by the sound of cutlery. Dessert on the table before anyone spoke. Jelly shivered as elbows shifted.

  ‘Over at the Home today,’ said his father, smacking the flat red of jelly with the back of his spoon.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘I said, I was over at the Home today.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  His mother glared, flushing.

  ‘Granpa doesn’t look too good.’

  ‘And I should go over and say the last good-byes, eh?’

  ‘Wouldn’t hurt you.’

  ‘Come on, Dad. How many times now? He pretends he’s scaling the last wall every time he wants to be the centre of interest. Ol’ wombat.’

  His mother clapped the plates together, scraped the fat from cold chops, and threw scraps onto a sheet of newspaper.

  ‘No way to speak about your grandfather.’

  ‘Arr —’

  ‘No one goes over to see him much any more,’ said his father, pressing an imprint into the jelly.

  ‘He drove them away.’

  Newsprint was crumpled into a flat parcel. Dark stains appeared. It went into the kitchen tidy.

  ‘Oh, Jerra,’ said his mother, ‘you just don’t make sense any more. Your grandfather, now. Never complained when you were the favourite grandson. All the stories. About the war. Helped you write your poems.’

  ‘Yeah, Mum.’

  ‘Hardly spoken to him for years.’

  ‘Since Gran died.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  A chair shuddered. His father left the table.

  ‘I’ll be going over tomorrow with your mother,’ he said as he went upstairs.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘Story of your life, my boy,’ she muttered, squeezing detergent.

  ‘And others’,’ he said.

  ‘Who do you love?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  Granma sipped.

  ‘Course you do.’

  ‘Boys don’t.’

  ‘Granpa did.’

  ‘That was the olden days.’

  ‘You love me, your ol’ Granma?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘See? You’re fibbing.’

  Jerra squirmed at having it drawn out of him.

  ‘What about Mum?’

  ‘When she’s not sad.’

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘When we go fishing. He’s grumpy sometimes.’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Auntie Jewel.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Her pomes.’

  ‘What about Grandad’s?’

  ‘Just blokes, blokes, blokes. They talk stupid an’ never do anythink. Got the pip wiv yearnin’ —’

  Granma placed her cup roundly on the saucer. Dragonflies hovered over the hydrangeas.

  His father’s head beat slow time on the steering wheel. Sunlight lulled Jerra almost back to sleep.

  They caught their reflections in the glass doors, and inside smelled of things Jerra remembered: postponement, the brittle smell of rotten wood, the smell of blackened lemons. Doors were open and thin heads protruded from stiff sheets, noses and cheeks twitching.

  46-B. The B was coming off. Sunk in the bed, the hairless old man watched them come. His eyelashes were gone and the eyes were those of a reptile or a bird. His father’s would be the same. Hands, the colour of ash, clawed the sheets.

  Jerra followed in and leant on the bedside cabinet. It creaked.

  ‘Hullo, Dad,’ said his father. ‘How’s things?’

  The mouth contracted.

  ‘Hullo, Grandad,’ said Jerra, trying to keep the lips from his own teeth.

  It was cold in the little room. On the cabinet stood a cactus in a Vegemite jar. He squeezed, carefully, the firm flesh. He glanced at his mother, who smiled, lips dry and pale. A stocking was slipping, he could see. She smiled again.

  ‘How’s he been?’ the old man rattled.

  ‘Jerra?’ his father asked. ‘Oh, he’s fine, aren’t you, Jez?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Job . . .’

  ‘What was that, Dad?’ asked his mother.

  ‘A job. Has he . . . ?’

  ‘He’s workin’ on it,’ said his father, looking sideways.

  ‘Get him something to do, Tom.’

  Thin membranes fluttered.

  ‘I can’t do it for ’im, Dad. Boy’s gotta find something for himself. He’s had work. Fishing. I told you about that. Might even go back one day, eh son?’

  ‘Don’t let ’im sit around. Doesn’t do us any good.’ The old man tightened his grip on the sheets. ‘You gotta do something, Jerra.’

  Jerra nodded, managing not to look away.

  ‘Jump in.’

  His mother clasped the knuckles on the sheet.

  ‘He’s doing his best, Dad,’ she whispered.

  ‘Jobs are hard to get,’ said his father. ‘I don’t want him settlin’ for anything. Like me.’

  She glanced.

  ‘I never did much,’ said the old man. ‘You get old ’fore you get around to doing anything.’

  Jerra almost smiled, leaning on the cabinet, but the cactus caught him.

  ‘Didn’t do anything wrong. Not a bad man . . . sometimes you almost think you can see . . . the light on the surface . . . too far away . . . Oh, why do they give me the pills?’

  Tears. A nurse came.

  ‘Come on, Mr Nilsam. Cheer up, shall we?’ She folded him neatly into the pillows. ‘I think it’s time for your medication. And a rest, eh? A nice rest?’

  She was still at it as they went up the corridor.

  the cut

  THE FUNERAL, a few weeks later, was the third Jerra had been to; it was almost as hurried as Jewel’s, though there was no embarrassment, only resignation and dull skies. His father was tired. Jerra noticed his patient handling of the relatives, the jolly handshakes, the meaningful sorrow-filled glances. At the cemetery Jerra’s mind strayed from the burnished RSL badges and Glo-mesh handbags to Jewel’s funeral where he had stepped in time with the other men, the coffin not quite resting on his shoulder, his arms aching to keep his corner up, and he saw in front of him the reddening neck of his father, red, he thought then, because his father was older than the others and was feeling the strain, but it was the same unmentioned colour that had come into his face the first day in the big house in Nedlands, and the day, a week later, that Sean moved in. Jerra often saw his father with that complexion in his younger days, standing at the window overlooking the jacarandas, hands fisted in his pockets. No, he thought, watching the serpentine movement of the Glo-mesh skin in front of him, Dad wasn’t angry then, but something stuck in his guts. He knows a few things, my poor old man.

  The will was read two days later.

  After the relatives had left, and the lamingtons gone, Jerra’s mother came up to his room with
an old wooden box. Her face was dark, cut deep under the eyes. She was out of breath from the climb. Freckles of dust had settled on her forearm; her hair was limp and dull.

  ‘There are these,’ she said. ‘You were to get them all, but most of them are lost.’

  ‘What are they?’ Jerra got up.

  She set the gritty box down on the bed, took out the tiny, dark key and laid it on top.

  ‘His diaries. Your father might like to look at them, later, too.’

  ‘Finally got it sorted out, eh?’

  ‘Hmm. Vultures, they are. Never see them otherwise, still, there wasn’t much to argue over. That upset them.’

  ‘Anybody have anything to bitch about?’

  ‘No more than usual. Mabel had a migraine, Jean was disappointed.’

  ‘No more than usual.’

  ‘Uncle Jim was there. Brought a gigantic wreath for the family.’

  ‘The Power, eh? Where’d he fly in from?’

  ‘Don’t know. Nice of him, anyhow.’

  ‘Oh, a nice man, is ol’ Jimbo. He’s not even family; what was he doing involved with that?’

  ‘Bit hard, aren’t you? He’s done us well. He was probably just there to see we all got a fair deal. His solicitors are the executors.’

  ‘He’s a snake.’ Like his wriggling son, Sean. No, he thought. He’s a fox – with rabies. They both are.

  She blew the tiny balls of dust from the hairs on her arm.

  ‘Better get on with me work.’ She opened the door. ‘And be nice to your Dad, Jem. It’s all been a bit hard on him.’

  He opened the box. Inside, smelling of age and storage, were three parcels in dark, frayed envelopes. He opened them all, carefully fingering the paper. Two were bound ledger books, like thick, hard, exercise books, and the third was a small note-pad, gritty and soiled.

  He glanced at the florid figures, the brownish ink. One of the larger books, ending in 1949, had been torn in half. He was revolted by the smell of the paper. He put them back in their envelopes, and the envelopes in the box.

  Jerra met his father on the way down to the toilet. They nodded, his father haggard from the shift.

  ‘Comin’ down to the shack? My holidays start next week.’

  ‘Orright. Yeah, that’d be good.’