The War Artist

by Simon Cleary

  If someone had asked her, she would have said she was good with change, that she’s learned to cope without being swallowed by circumstance, change the only constant and all that. These last months proof. The thousand adaptations she’s made while he was away, all the work she’s been forced to do on herself – that phrase the counsellor at the hospital employed every session.

  But now … now the new wife she was going to unveil to him, the little ceremony she had in mind, has been derailed by Samuel Beckett.

  ‘So, that’s to remember him?’

  She looks into her husband’s eyes. His anger has given way, but she can’t tell what’s replaced it.

  ‘Is that a question?’ she hears him ask.

  Is that the sound of contempt? she wonders.

  ‘I’ve made a booking,’ she replies, backing away. ‘The usual place on the river. Do you want to go?’

  James sighs as he, too, retreats from whatever edge they were at.

  ‘You look tired,’ he says.

  She’s not ready to respond to that.

  ‘Do we still want to go or not?’

  ‘Of course,’ her husband says, something like tenderness ebbing back. He touches her cheek with his hand.

  People Trying to Enjoy Themselves

  When he’s changed she presses down the wings of his collar, and as she leans in he recognises her perfume. On any other return he’d whistle, comic-book style, both of them knowing. He’d reach for her, his right hand on the back of her neck, pulling her to him, finding her cheek then her lips, waiting for her to give. But today he is unbending, and she unwilling.

  ‘Issey Miyake,’ he says.

  ‘Thank you,’ she returns.

  He blinks. She straightens his shirt.

  When it’s time to leave Phelan swallows two tablets to hold off the headache, slips downstairs to the garage and climbs into his orange BMW. He adjusts the driver’s seat to his own height and sits quietly with his hands on the steering wheel, refamiliarising himself with the smell of the upholstery and the dashboard and the view from the side mirrors. He reads the mechanic’s sticker in the top corner of the windscreen and sees that Penny has had it serviced. She’s a good woman. He hears her shoes on the floorboards above as she moves from room to room looking for him.

  ‘In the car,’ he yells out when she calls his name.

  ‘I was wondering where you’d gone,’ she says, settling into the passenger seat.

  He caresses the wheel’s leather grip. ‘You don’t know how good this feels.’

  She smiles.

  Phelan turns the key in the ignition. The engine and the radio come to life simultaneously. Purr and chatter. Hear those revs, he thinks, beauty’s voice. He pulls out of the garage just as the hourly news bulletin begins on the local ABC station Penny must have been listening to when she was last in the car. He glances at the digital clock on the dash and counts the seconds until it changes from 11:59 to noon. Eleven seconds. It’s easily fixed, he thinks, but losing eleven seconds in six months …

  ‘They covered you bringing Sapper Beckett home yesterday,’ Penny says. ‘It was on all the news.’

  He turns off the radio. ‘What did they say?’

  She thinks for a moment before responding. ‘That the nation was mourning. That despite their loss, his parents were thankful for the army’s support. That every soldier matters and what better proof could there be than you escorting him home.’ She pauses. ‘Mateship and egalitarianism … that was a theme. The Sapper and the Brigadier. That our army is different from others. That we’re different. That sort of thing.’

  He’s looking fixedly ahead as she speaks.

  ‘They’ll turn you into a hero if you’re not careful,’ she finishes, smiling, prodding him for a response. And when he remains silent, she reaches across and slaps him lightly on the thigh. ‘More of a hero than you already are, James.’

  When he still doesn’t react she pokes him in the ribs and tries tickling something out of him, but he brushes her hand away with his elbow.

  James stops the car at an intersection and taps the steering wheel while waiting for the lights to change. An irritable little rhythm, Penny thinks, not a tune she knows. Ah, well. She looks out the window as they wend through the Valley and the slumbering neon of its nightclubs and strip joints. She’s never liked this double-faced part of town: the frenzy of its nights so different from its sullen days. On the footpath outside a newsagent’s she spies the day’s front page displayed in its metal frame, Tragic Homecoming. Under the headline there’s a photo of Beckett’s casket being carried from the plane onto the tarmac, honour guard and dignitaries, James leading the procession. She looks back at him behind the wheel, tense but inscrutable.

  There’s always a period of readjustment. As a general rule it’s one for one, a girlfriend told her when she and James were freshly married and he was away on an exchange with the Americans.

  ‘If they’re away for a month, it’ll take a month back home before the house returns to normal.’

  ‘That can’t be right,’ Penny had replied, ‘because that would mean for a six-month deployment …’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Wait and see, young Penelope, wait and see.’

  ‘But how does a marriage manage that?’

  ‘Look around. Count how many don’t.’

  Too much of it was true. The weeks of finding their way again after each return, of wrestling a new equilibrium into place. Yet their marriage itself was unthreatened by challenges like these. You make a vow. You do it before God and Society. Though she has learned to ration herself. Anticipation for his return, yes, but only so much. Joy, but not unbounded. She sees frustrations and disappointments as irritants, nothing terminal. And anyway, her husband doesn’t want to fight another battle when he returns. They love each other, need each other, rely on each other. That’s what she will tell him.

  They park on the circular driveway at New Farm Park. Penny is relieved to open the car door and let the breathing world in. As James gets out and walks around to her door, he reads a lost dog notice taped neatly to a lamppost.

  ‘Spoodle!’ he spits. ‘Spoodle! What a stupid name for a dog.’

  High clouds follow them as they cross the grass to the café. Penny takes his hand. He goes to shake her off, but she holds on. She points out the rosebushes as she leads him between the raised beds, naming the different species, looking for words to soothe, any words. They could be the names of racehorses or colours on a paint chart, her husband’s face blank to the relationships between the name and the flower she’s pointing to. At the end of one row is a bush with a single spent rose, a dead head missed by the gardener that morning. She watches as James snaps it off its stalk, a fall of shriveled brown petals, and lifts it to his nose.

  When he and Penny arrive it is she who steps forward and gives the young waitress at the door the name of their booking, adding that it’s a special occasion.

  ‘What are you celebrating?’ the excitable waitress asks good-naturedly.

  ‘My husband’s home from the war,’ she replies, gazing up at Phelan and smiling.

  ‘What war is that?’

  Penny’s body stiffens and she turns slowly back to the waitress, but Phelan places his hand on his wife’s arm. ‘It’s okay,’ he says to her quietly. Then to the waitress, ‘Which table is ours?’

  The waitress looks dumbly from one to the other, blinking, before pointing towards a table with a river view.

  Though it’s damned-well not all right. Sure, we wouldn’t want to be like the States where they stand up on buses and pay for your meals and clap as you walk past in uniform. Christ, all of Yankee Stadium rises when the on-ground camera picks out a marine in the bleachers. But we’ve got to be able to do better than limit our gratitude to ANZAC Day and all of its little rituals, th
at national bloody containment exercise.

  As they take their seats the maître d’, an older woman, hurries over and bows her head apologetically.

  ‘Welcome home, Sir.’

  Phelan nods and smiles. ‘Thank you, Ma’am,’ he says, reassured that sacrifice and recognition might still find their place here.

  When they look out, the river sparkles. Despite everything, kids play on pieces of sculpture. A family of bikes rolls by, swerving around a ball-juggling clown spruiking for tips from the walkway. Shoppers wander past carrying jute bags filled with organic vegetables from the Saturday market on the other side of the refurbished old Powerhouse. The river breeze carries Penny’s perfume to him once again, drawing him towards her until a plate crashes to the floor in the kitchen and Phelan starts violently, his head whipping back.

  Penny is startled too, but by his reaction. Phelan is panting, desperate gasps, his chest heaving, his eyes wide.

  She reaches across and places her hand gently on his arm. ‘James?’

  He looks up at her, almost frightened.

  ‘James, what is it?’

  He shakes his head. ‘I don’t know … nothing.’

  At the next table three cyclists in lycra discuss the Brisbane Lions’ season, replaying games, reviewing the list, debating selections. One of the men is ruing injuries. Another is mapping out what the team needs to do to make the finals next year. At first, the banter is soothing, the sort of mess hall debate he’s joined a thousand times, an army of soldiers filling weeks of downtime between operations.

  ‘No, no, no, no, no,’ one of them suddenly says.

  ‘Hopeless,’ another replies.

  ‘You’ve got to admit, we’re getting nowhere,’ the third joins in, and the banter descends into a squabble over whether the coach should be sacked in the off-season. Two of them want his head, swearing it’s the only option, that nothing will change until he’s gone and it’s suddenly too much for Phelan who gulps down his beer and holds up the empty glass to the waiter. Just days ago he was marching out of a forward operating base in the Chora Valley, holding off the forces of barbarism, a soldier about to die in his arms.

  ‘Darling?’ The second glass of alcohol in the middle of the day heightening her confusion.

  Phelan compares his hands to those of the men at the table beside him. He likes his strong wrists, his hard skin, the way his muscles and veins rise off the back of his hands like mountain ridges.

  ‘Hell-o-ooo’, she croons softly, so only he can hear. ‘Are you there, James?’

  He turns his hands over as he counts the nicks, the scars, the white hieroglyphs marking his flesh and no one but him capable of deciphering them: the skin that came off a knuckle the day he was thrown around inside a Bushmaster that took a pothole too fast during a training exercise, the hairs on the back of two of his fingers singed off for good, the webbing somehow split between the middle and index fingers of his left hand during that Chora patrol, the infection that followed dirt and grit getting embedded in his palm.

  ‘James? James?’

  These men, he thinks, with their fat fingers and their sunspots and their warts and their never-ending jibber-jabber.

  ‘You blokes done or what?’ Phelan turns his body around as he speaks, opening his chest to the table of cyclists.

  The closest one, his back to Phelan’s table, swivels. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You’ve been banging on for half a fucking hour about absolute bullshit. There are other people trying to enjoy themselves here.’

  Little Blue Wren

  They stay until the cyclists have gone.

  When it’s time to leave Phelan squeezes his wife’s hand and they walk along the river in silence. The water has turned muddy under the high sun and no grass grows under the canopies of the great figs lining the path. In the bandstand beyond the figs, three small Chinese men perform tai chi, weaving out of harm’s way, this left and right, this up and down, all in slow motion. The old men disappear behind the girth of the next fig as Phelan and Penny continue on their heavy-footed way. On the other side of the tree a foraging ibis appears, perched on a rubbish bin. It looks Phelan in the eye. For long seconds Phelan meets its wary stare, before the ibis drops its head and plunges its long beak into the bin. You’re right bird, Phelan thinks, I won’t hurt you.

  Up ahead is a bank of the new yellow CityCycle hire bikes set up near the ferry terminal.

  ‘Can’t get away from bloody bikes,’ Phelan scorns, but aware of himself, some part of it a joke.

  ‘Come on then,’ she says, trying to nudge him further out of his black mood, ‘let’s try them out.’

  When he pauses she prods a little harder. ‘I mean, it’s not like you to let those cyclists back there get to you.’

  Phelan grunts, a reluctant retreat. ‘You win.’

  Penny swipes her credit card at the ticket machine and points out which bikes to unlock. ‘Don’t forget the helmet,’ she reminds him as he is about to head off. Then smiles to herself when she realises what she’s just said.

  They take the footpath on Oxlade Drive, past the art-deco block of flats on the corner, past the new riverfront homes, before cutting across to the water through the gap between the veterans hospice and the bowls club.

  The movement’s good, Phelan thinks, surprising himself. Feeling his body is good. They ride abreast for a while, the riverside path giving way to a floating boardwalk, water beneath them. Phelan sets the pace, travelling quickly enough to pull Penny along – faster than if she’d been cycling alone, but not so fast as to lose her. Because people need to be pushed, he thinks, they do, and in the end they’re grateful.

  How good to be working the stiffness out, the river sweeping by. And the solace of activity, of accomplishing things – the walkers and the prams they pass, the slower riders they overtake, the steel cantilever bridge that for a long time is ahead of them, but which they soon reach, pedal beneath, and then leave behind. The trick to any long journey is to break it down into smaller pieces, the buzz of achievement that gives. Penny falling in behind, the journey itself disappearing.

  He reaches the city and its glass-faced cafés, its weekend shoppers, its skateboarders and its buskers. As the Botanic Gardens approaches, the tall buildings turn into a forest of mangroves, suddenly dark, and his bike’s tyres are vibrating on the wooden boardwalk. It’s like he’s back in the cargo plane shepherding a young warrior home and all he wants to do is make the sound continue, to tunnel on and on, to lose himself in it.

  When eventually Phelan emerges from the mangroves at Gardens Point, the light is stunning. It is too bright for either reverie or illusion. He turns his head to check on Penny, but she’s no longer behind him. He stops and waits, but still she does not come. He doubles back and re-enters the mangroves, this time slowly, a feeling he’s lost something in there. When he locates her, she is off her bike, exhausted in the shadows, leaning over the boardwalk’s timber railings, staring at the dark mud.

  ‘I got carried away,’ he says, joining her at the railing. ‘Are you all right?’

  Her breathing is shallow. It sounds angry. She waves the question away.

  Phelan waits with her while she catches her breath, looking down into the mangrove flats at the thousand tiny holes dotting the mudscape. There is a darting movement at the corner of his eye, but when he turns his head what he thought was a crab has disappeared into the wet earth. He settles in to wait it out, for it to poke its head up again, for the whole army of them to emerge from their mudholes. But crabs are patient too.

  A group of walkers approach. Phelan raises his finger to his lips, hushing them. They look over the railing, but see nothing and continue on their way. A minute passes, perhaps less, no time at all, but already this little test he’s set himself is growing hard. His mind will not be still. It is filled with engine noise, a low keening.

 
An upriver ferry passes on the other side of the mangrove forest. The sound of its engine, distorted by the canopy of leaf and branch, is somehow ghostly. Phelan watches the boat’s wake work its way steadily through the taproots towards them, arc after arc, wondering if it will help flush the crabs from their holes. But nothing. Perhaps there were no crabs after all. A wren appears in the branches above, flitting azure, the colour reminding him of Kira, and he follows it, this flash of her, branch to branch, till she disappears. Everything is so difficult. Everything disappearing.

  He has forgotten Penny entirely, and when she speaks her voice is a surprise to him, a thin woodnote, as if the wren is returning in admonishment.

  ‘James,’ he thinks he hears his wife say, ‘I’ve got cancer.’

  Big Black Crow

  Penny stares ahead. Here she is at the point of her great unburdening, and she can’t even look at him. Got cancer, had it – it’s a swirl of uncertain tense. The falsity of past and present and whatever shadow of whatever future lies ahead. I had a breast, I lost it. Lost it! As if, were she to look carefully enough, she might find it again. As for the rest of her, who yet knows what the hormone therapy will do? Sometimes it feels like an alien being has already entered her. How much of what is left, is me? she wonders. And whose voice will it be when she finds what it is she needs to say?

  In the tangle of mangrove trees she begins to make out a map of sorts, her last few months located in the interwoven mass in front of her, the first shocking scan branching out to the next, doctor reaching out to doctor, date spreading to date, node to node. She reads the foliage as it reveals itself: a narrative of diagnosis and prognosis and treatment.

  He listens to her, uncomprehending.

  On and on she goes, locating opinions, then parsing them for him, each nuance. This world of bodily frailty she knows so well, for years lived vicariously, now inhabited afresh. She knows too much. She throws it at him, everything she can find. She has a need to overwhelm him, wants him to gasp for breath.