‘You’re doin’ alright then.’
‘Well enough. Now come in and meet Stef. I’ve told her a bit about you but take it easy on her. No need for an interrogation.’
‘Righto.’
‘And watch the swearing, too. Stef ’s not big on it.’
A tall woman with short-cropped, dark hair met them at the front door. She tentatively hugged Des and said, ‘I’m so sorry for your loss, Mister Winfield.’
‘Des. Please. Call me Des.’
The house was warm in a 1960s sort of way—floral carpet, big sofa and a laminex table in the kitchen.
‘We haven’t been here long,’ Stef said. ‘It was furnished when we bought it. An executor’s auction.’
‘Yeah, nice,’ Des said, his eyes darting about. ‘Guessing I can’t fag inside then?’
They ushered him onto the back porch and left him to enjoy his cigarette. The house sat under the flight path and every couple of minutes a lumbering jet descended towards the airport, great behemoths of flashing lights and screaming engines. Des finished one cigarette and lit another. He inhaled the smoke deep into his lungs and held it there. He imagined it filtering out into his body: smoke in his arms, in his legs, in his head.
‘What were you thinkin’, Beth?’ he said under his breath, smoke streaming from his nose.
He would have liked to stay out there all night, smoking and taking it all in. He wouldn’t have to struggle through conversations with Toby and Stef, all three of them trying to connect in some way that might mean they’re a family.
Des drew himself up and walked back into the kitchen. Stef and Toby were sitting at the table nursing cups of tea.
‘Cuppa, Dad?’
‘Haven’t got anythin’ stronger have ya?’
‘Sorry, Dad. Stef ’s a non-drinker.’
‘Shit.’ Des corrected himself. ‘Jeez. You too?’
‘I haven’t had a drink since we started going out.’ Toby reached his hand across the table and rested it on Stef ’s arm.
‘Right. Well,’ Des said, looking about the kitchen. ‘Mind if I borrow the car?’
Toby and Stef exchanged glances.
‘The Brickmaker’s is just up on Spensley Street. Reckon you’d have remembered that.’
‘Yeah, of course, the Brickmaker’s. I can walk from ’ere. Need to stretch me legs after the flight anyway.’
The night air bit at Des again as he headed out the front door. He had a few dollars in his pocket, enough for a couple of shooters to still the tremors. Before long though, he found himself retracing their route back out to Bell Street. It felt good to move, the cold air filling his lungs and the reassuring sound of shoes on concrete. He was sure he’d done a job along here somewhere, a big place up towards Pentridge. He still believed he could tell a Des Winfield job from those Italian operators who were too quick in and too quick out.
He walked an hour towards the freeway before heading south again into the streets of Brunswick East. The old street hadn’t changed much. He felt for the slight rise and fall in the footpath and knew the third streetlight would be out because Tom Griffin had shot it out with his slug gun every time the power company had come to repair it for the last twenty years.
The house looked shabby. The grass at the front needed a mow. Maybe Toby hadn’t been as regular a visitor as he made out. For all his efforts in getting there though, Des couldn’t bring himself to go inside just yet. Instead, he walked through the side gate and along the path. He remembered mixing the concrete and barrowing it up from the driveway. He had concreted the backyard over completely in the early days, all the way to the back fence. The Hills hoist sat stoically in the middle of the bare expanse of yard. Des skirted the house, sticking to what he knew, the comforting memories of backyard cricket and barbeques. These he could understand.
Having circled the house, he sat on the front porch, lit up a fag and took long slow drags, allowing the nicotine to do its work.
A figure appeared at the front gate and a torch beam blinded him. He put his hand up to shield his eyes from the glare.
‘That you, Dessy?’
The voice sounded familiar.
‘It’s me, ya blind prick, Tom Griffin.’
‘Griffo! Turn that fuckin’ light off. You’ll give a bloke a heart attack.’
Tom lowered the light and Des climbed to his feet. The two met half way down the front path and shook hands.
‘Jesus mate, you look like shit,’ Tom said, then remembered himself. ‘We’re all real sorry to hear about Beth, Des. Terrible business. You must be takin’ it hard?’
‘I only flew down from up north today. Tryin’ to piece it all together in me head, ya know.’
‘Heard it was a shocking accident. Trish saw it on the telly.’
They hadn’t seen each other for two years and Des thought the gap between them was unreasonably wide.
He broke the thick silence. ‘Had you seen ’er recently, Tom? Beth?’
‘Not near as much as we used to when you were around. She always waved on her way down to the shops. That’s about it.’
‘What about Trish, she keep in touch with ’er?’
‘Reckons she spoke to her a couple a months back. Just stuff about Toby really.’
They heard a semi out on the freeway, the sound of a loose tarp flapping at a hundred k’s an hour.
‘Well, I’ll leave ya to it,’ Tom said, extending his hand again. ‘Be sure and let us know about the funeral, won’t ya?’
They shook hands. ‘Thanks, Tom. Keep an eye on the papers. Toby’ll have a notice in.’
As Tom walked back out into the street Des called after him, ‘I’ll ring the power company in the mornin’ about that streetlight if ya like?’
‘Yeah, good on ya.’
Des found the spare key hanging on the rafter. He pushed his foot on the bottom of the door where it had always jammed on the step. The first thing that hit him was the smell of the place, trapped in the furniture, in the curtains and bedspreads, the lived-in smell of a home, none of it familiar to him anymore. He wandered from room to room. It could have been a different house to the one he had lived in for thirty years. The old sofa was gone, replaced by an Ikea ensemble with matching armchairs. There were dishes in the sink and the laundry smelled of cat shit.
Des sat at the kitchen table and lay his hands flat on the dusty surface. Even here, back in Melbourne, back in the old house, it was as though everything had shifted and cracked underneath him, his son living a new life, his wife killed in a manner he could only guess at, his old friends barely able to talk to him. Nothing was set, nothing solid like concrete. For the first time in years he wanted to be ankle deep in wet cement, a trowel in each hand, smoothing over the pits and crevices. He longed for that feeling of transformation that came with shaping the concrete to his will. When he’d finished he could sit back and admire the artistry in the curve of a gutter or the perfect line of a vee joint. He ached for Beth to appear out of the summer dust with her little esky in hand and a soft smile on her face, to see Toby waiting by the front gate when he arrived home, cricket bat in hand. He was never a man to understand happiness when he was in the midst of it but he looked back now and knew he should have been happy then.
He’d hoped to feel Beth’s presence here, but the house was still and quiet and empty. He ran his hands across the tabletop and the dust stuck to his fingertips. He got up, wiped his hands on his pants and walked down the hallway to the front door. He locked it behind him and replaced the key on the rafter. Toby would need it when he came in to clean up.
He lit a cigarette and walked out into the night.
The Do
Anthony Panegyres (Phillips)
‘W on’t you come along and pick out a few pieces for the exhibition?’ Mum asks.
‘Sorry, Mum. I want to spend a little time breaking in the new reed.’
Mum kisses me on the cheek, then pecks Dad on the lips. ‘Enjoy the boys’ night in.’
Mum’s off to pai
nt live nude models. Portraits these days, large pieces of paper with dabs of minimalist ink. She’s better at the quick ones, she says. She’s left a few on the kitchen table for me to rifle through for her next exhibition.
I’ve the clarinet out, new reed at the ready. Don’t know how long I’ll have to practice. Dad’s mate, Nick Barboutis, visits now and then, only when Mum’s out. Nick’s covert visits have been occurring for years; sometimes I think Mum knows about them. I mean Dad’s not overly careful. An extra mug or tiny coffee cup or spirit glass in the sink would be a dead giveaway to most.
For an instrument that dominated Dixie-land jazz and now plays a key role in both Balkan music and classical music, the clarinet’s a relative newbie. An eighteenth-century invention, an adolescent of the musical world, a teenager just like me. It’s a single-reed instrument; the bassoon and oboe and the ancient aulos all have double reeds. I’ll want a fifteen-minute session for the new reed to settle into its groove; any more time will stress it out. It’ll be the Rimsky-Korsakov Clarinet Concerto tonight. Lasts about eight minutes all up. For a warm-up it’s the ideal time.
The scent of brewing hot chocolate fills the kitchen space. Always the same when my health-conscious mother is out. Dad adores me playing. He was once a muso of sorts too. Chiefly old school rembetika—the Greek Blues—on the piano. ‘Don’t always need the twanging strings of the bouzouki,’ Dad would say. Sure, he played other music, but the old songs were when he was at his happiest. He doesn’t play the piano these days. If it weren’t for me dabbling away on it now and then, it’d be collecting dust like a haunted house.
I remember when his second cousin, Christo Antonas, held the yearly Do.
Music is in the family. Dad and Christo’s grandmothers were in a band once. Really old Greek songs, Dad tells me, lah-di-dah, turn of the twentieth century kind of songs. Clear voices, all polished. Well before my time—still I’ve heard about it and seen the black-and-white pics.
Christo’s family used to hold the annual Do at their previous, statelier home, before his father passed away. I’d been to a few. Always a mouth-watering lamb in the oven, slow cooked and crammed with butter, pine nuts, currants and spices, crushed cloves and cinnamon. There were mezedes too. Salted cod with a potato garlic sauce, fragrant meatballs, grilled octopus tentacles, dried and thinly sliced red fish roe, and afterward, shortbreads and the prized finale: an orange semolina cake. Dad said it was a custom. I recall all the culinary details: after all, my generation is partly raised on television’s food frenzy.
Christo would greet everyone with his parents by his side. His dad, who died years ago, an urban yeti of sorts, was the hairiest man I’ve met. The men gathered in one room at a long table and the women in the plusher lounge room. Everyone would gather around the piano late in the evening, my favourite part, arms looped over each other’s shoulders, Dad’s fingers prancing along the keys as they sang, Christo leading the songs.
Nick knocks his crazy jingle-bell knock on the front door before I’ve even wet my lips. Dad puts his hand over my arm. ‘We’ll get some time later, Loukas. Always love it when you play.’
Nick swaggers in. He’d be handsome if he weren’t so short: olive skin, a rooster’s chest, salty-white hair and a light beard. Dad’s asking about his latest girl. Nick always has some new flame and I know that Dad secretly thinks it’s cool. Mum won’t let Nick in the house. She’s eternally saying: ‘He’s nice but not quite made right.’ I know it’s due to him not having settled down yet.
‘Nuru. She’s from Botswana,’ I hear Nick say to Dad regarding the latest lady. ‘It’s true about what they say. The darker the better.’
Dad chortles. I’m too PC to laugh. My schoolmates would be horrified if they’d heard Nick. ‘Not cool, Nick.’
‘I really like her,’ he confesses, his voice now a beacon of sobriety. ‘We click. She gets me. Lets me have my space too.’
Dad’s mien transforms. The slight indent on his nasal brow deepens, as it does whenever he actively listens. ‘Never heard you say that before, Niko. You settling down?’
‘Think I might. Early days. But you know how the old folks are. You married a Greek. You’re not used to it. The further away you go, the harder it gets. Italians are good but not quite as good as Greeks, Orthodox Arabs are passable, Serbs are semi-acceptable . . .’
‘Times have changed,’ says Dad. ‘We all had to appease the family back then. I mean, how Greek is Stacie? A few Greek words with an accent worse than nails on a blackboard. Church a few times a year. You’ll be right. If it’s right, it’s right.’
‘Heard the latest?’
Dad shakes his head.
‘Christo is having a Do in a couple of weeks. You’re invited.’
‘Cool,’ I intercede. ‘I was just thinking about the old days. Dad and Christo rocked it. Loved those old sing-alongs.’
‘It’s different, Loukas,’ Dad says. ‘They’re in an apartment now. All squashed. You remember his mum, Theia Irini?’
I remember her. Elegant: upright and proud.
‘Well, she’s hooked up to this dialysis machine a lot of the time. It’s sad. Christo’s a good guy. He’s done the right thing. You know, taking care of her. But he never got to marry like me, or at least date like Niko. Think he’s trapped himself a bit. This sounds cold, but when a man nurses his mother he marries her.’
‘I still want to go.’
‘Might be better if you kept Mum company that day. No way she’d come nowadays.’
I can tell Dad is embarrassed of something. It’s the old scratching his temple. His tells are easy, poker players would have a fiesta. I can’t discern what exactly the cringe part is though.
‘C’mon,’ intercedes Niko. ‘What’s the harm? Let Loukas come if he wishes.’
‘I enjoyed the old shows,’ I say.
‘It’s not like those anymore,’ says Dad. I realise that this goes beyond the crammed apartment. ‘Don’t want to go myself. But I’ll go for Christo and Theia Irini. Christo hasn’t changed—still serves up those old Greek sweets with an ouzo or brandy. You know the kind, sweetened orange peel or a preserved fig or walnut. That formal house-visit stuff that your yiayia gives her special guests.’
I nod, reflecting I understand, reflecting we’re on a similar level. We’re not, of course, and it’s not a generational thing either. I like all those ceremonial sweets but now is not the time to confess. Perhaps it’s guilt driving Dad to attend? Old friendships, old ties.
I really don’t mind going. In fact, I’m keen.
* * *
We roll up. Cars line the typical suburban street. It’s a villa, part of a row, that one-storey, standard clichéd cream brick sort. The other houses have front lawns of varying shades of green but the villas just have the odd shrub sprouting, the type that looks like rosemary but isn’t.
The door is open and the entrance would be too, but for Christo standing there. He’s wearing jeans and a paisley shirt that’s a couple of decades out of date. I don’t even smile at that. It’s been Mum who prevents Dad from wearing shirts just like it. Christo looks like a character from one of those Italian movies we’ve studied in school: The Postman or Cinema Paradiso. His large dark eyes are so different now. They’ve moved from a confident-merry to a mournful-oboey look. My dad kisses Christo on both cheeks.
‘Hi Theio,’ I say.
‘Too old for that,’ he says. ‘Christo, from now on.’
‘Okay, Christo. Thanks for inviting us.’
‘That a boy, a levendi like his old man.’ As he addresses me, he scans the path for other arrivals.
‘My son, Loukas,’ Dad says to the ladies after entering. ‘Plays clarinet in the school orchestra.’ He spouts a stream of names that I would never remember. There’s a mixture of closely pressed table-chairs and couches. Ladies’ faces glow and glower. Most touch me when introduced, pats on the arms, kisses on one or both cheeks, some even embrace me, remembering me as a youth—maybe the more puckish ones t
ry to cop a little feel. I’m sixteen and, I suppose, handsome to them—sweet-tempered, locks of dark hair—perhaps an echo of their once youthful husbands. Next to the crowded bookshelf is the sunken Theia Irini, Christo’s mother. I recall her as dignified, loving and stern. She maintains a sense of pride but now her skin, body, and hair are husk-like, retreating downwards, being lured into the shadows. I kiss her musty cheeks as she manages a smile. None of the ladies smoke in the Triassic-era room. The piano, wooden and polished, did manage to get squeezed in. Above the bookshelf stand ebony statues of ‘traditional’ turn-of-the-century Africans, nude with spears. Painted plates of native birds stand on a shelf of their own. A few I can identify: wood swallows with their burglar faces; blue splendid wrens; the ones with the yellow heads are bee-eaters; and there’s some kind of blue kingfisher. The two paintings adorning the sole free wall are old landscapes in oils, one of Chios, where my father’s family descends from, and the other a sunset piece of the outback. A vase of fluffy chrysanthemums rests on the middle of a small coffee table. I imagine the old ladies taking comfort in the same decorations, although today things are tighter, more constrained, more insular. A shrivelled nostalgia of sorts.
I help out with the trays, taking the mezedes around like Mum and Dad have taught me to. Outside in the tiny courtyard, where the men are compressed on small benches and chairs, one guy, dark and bald, all nose, who is somehow distantly related to Dad, says to me: ‘Put the tray down. You’re not a pooftah.’
Although the bald man is trying to be pleasant, Dad and the others silence him with raised eyes. ‘Don’t mind him,’ says Nick Barboutis to me under his breath. ‘He’s been boganised.’ My dad’s gay great uncle, who’s never been officially ‘out’ and was once married, squirms a little in his folding chair.
It’s actually quite comical, their faces appear manly, as do their chests and arms, but their behaviour would appear effeminate to many Aussie blokes. Most have their legs crossed—they’re far more emotional or sensitive than my Aussie mates’ dads. It’s as though all the testosterone out here is seasoned with a Mediterranean effeminacy.
We'll Stand In That Place and other stories Page 5