‘I think there’s someone out the front!’
‘Probably somebody walking down the street to the park. We’ve had homeless people sleeping in the park, lately. They’re allowed to do that, you know.’ Delores felt sorry for the homeless, shiftless in character and restless in habit. Where to go when there’s nowhere to go? They are neither acknowledged nor wanted.
‘No, they’ve stopped! Out the front! I can see movement. And a shopping cart thing.’ Archie let the curtain fall back, shutting out the greater world once more. ‘They’re up to no good. Bloody riff-raff and scumbags. Howard Sattler’s right, you know. The place is going to shit!’
It was always the same with the old man, mused Delores, who saw Archie’s rumbling paranoia as more than a touch of discord with those of planet Earth who drifted within his realm of suburban Guildford. But, strangely enough, he tolerated her, perhaps even liked her. Their relationship of carer and invalid had proved a solid partnership almost from the beginning, five years ago. The money was good, too. The money sure was good. Almost good enough to make her like Archie. She turned and moved her buxomness down the hallway. Archie was still muttering.
Delores busied herself in the kitchen, humming along to some radio tune, washing up the breakfast dishes. A kettle was coming to the boil, its noise and bubble the necessary precursors of a cup of tea. She had learned long ago that tea was to be made at 10am, no sooner, no later. A significant ritual, morning and afternoon tea, the fragrant offering of the steamy brew wafting off to some far god, far from this house. She pushed the traymobile into the sitting room.
‘I’ve made the tea, Archie.’ Delores noticed the temperature was warmer than usual. Perhaps the air-conditioner was packing it in. Something else on the blink: that would make Matthew happy. ‘You’re not too hot, are you love?’
‘No.’ Thinking. ‘It’s not that New Age stuff, is it?’
‘What? No, Archie, just your normal tea.’ Delores had tried to introduce him to the Russian Caravan blend, but he had rejected it out of hand, claiming the name itself carried some sinister overtone, a product of the Cold War: The Bay of Pigs, the Missile Crisis, the Petrov Affair and the Menzies era, times when good and evil were defined simply, to love or hate such an easy task. Too much choice, now, too much choice.
‘That other tea had a taste, you know. Like that one you bought last month. That one made by Earl Grey. Humph! Made him an earl for creating and selling shit! I don’t know!’
‘It’s got bergamot in it. That’s the taste.’ She had tried to explain it to him then but he hadn’t listened. He wouldn’t listen now.
‘Why would anyone do that to tea? An earl should know better, shouldn’t he, eh?’
‘I suppose …’
There was always a dark cloudy quaintness as they took their tea together in a sort of fabricated affinity. It’s what had to happen. Archie sipped his tea through a straw and tried to remember when it was any different.
‘Matthew! Don’t be a pig. Remember your manners!’ Rosalie Andrews chided her son, who continued to suck at the remains of his milkshake, something that had to be done: the slurp effect. She glanced across at her husband, Archie, who was engaged in an attempt to lance the small ball of ice-cream left at the bottom of his glass. ‘Perhaps you should have said something to the child, Archie.’ Unfortunately, they sat at a small, round table that drew the three of them into dangerous proximity. Milkshakes at close range, parents and child attempting a domesticated pose with uncertain application.
‘What do you mean?’ Archie tried not to speak too loudly; in fact, he had tried not to speak at all. But the words had rushed out in a crescendo, cast adrift by some inner demon. Already, unfamiliar heads turned in the expectation of conflict. They saw a woman, tall and brick-solid, with an equine face, well clothed and shod, an average man too small for his shirt, and a ten-year-old boy who’d seen it all before. Sweat broke out in Archie’s nether regions and across his brow, for he feared an open confrontation there in the heavily patronised al fresco area. He never fared well in their matrimonial set-tos; she was more the outdoors type, audaciously able to muster a withering vitriol while unaffected by embarrassment and large crowds. Already the small-arms fire had caused a modest flock of galahs to rise raucously from the nearby trees and seek refuge in a Moreton Bay fig on the other side of the zoo.
‘I said you should have said something to your son!’ The night has a thousand eyes: daytime at the zoo almost as many. They focussed on the two combatants at the little, white table. Somewhere a lion roared. ‘Did you hear me, Archie?’
‘God, Rosie, don’t make a scene.’ He looked about for salvation, hoping it might ride past.
‘Make a scene? Do you think I like staying home looking after your son “that we had to have”? The sacrifice I make while you’re off who-knows-where!’
‘We need the money.’
‘Of course we do, after you invested all ours away!’
‘They were good stocks! They just went bad, that’s all.’
‘Bad! How a St Hilda’s girl could marry such an arsehole, I’ll never know. We must both be fools. Thank God for my father’s money, is all I can say.’
‘Mum, Mum!’ Rosalie glared at her son. His had been a difficult birth, a great pain, a travail of Biblical proportion, which was obviously some portent. But she was a determined woman and she would work with what she had been given, imperfect as it was. The same applied to her husband.
‘Yes, Matthew?’
‘Can I have another milkshake?’ She scowled at him. ‘Please?’
‘Ask your father!’
A battery of furtive glances caught Archie red-faced.
He sucked up the last of his tea and swallowed the memory.
—
Archie Andrews and Rosalie Bonner married in July, 1959, in the red-brick and slated hallowedness of St Matthew’s Anglican Church in Guildford. There, the pious and penitent have sung praises to the Almighty and have drawn themselves away from the unbelievers and the righteous others since 1860. The original church was destroyed in a storm twelve years later and it was rumoured for some time that the mighty hand of the all-seeing God had struck a blow of wrath aimed mainly for the sexual indiscretions of one Nathaniel Andrews, Archie’s great-grandfather. Even Nathaniel would have agreed he’d been a ne’er-do-well and had led a rake’s existence, treading the wayward paths from drinking hole to drinking hole, avoiding his predatory creditors as he went, more by good luck than good management. The Reverend Augustus Stone rebuked the devil within Nathaniel at every opportunity and implored him to repent for, surely, he was ‘a wounded sinner’ in dire need of God’s redemptive power. But Nathaniel laughed and cursed God, swearing he would not enter the church again. He kept his word till Molly Brown fell pregnant and fingered Nathaniel as the culprit. His protests fell on deaf ears, drowned out by his foul record. The Reverend declared that the righteous hand of God had moved again. And eighty-seven years later, as storm clouds gathered outside, the union of Archie and Rosalie was witnessed by a small congregation who, if they were aware of those past events, may have been excused for expressing a faithless anxiety.
The parish register records that Nathaniel Andrews married Molly Brown within a decency of time, thus satisfying what the community felt was his moral responsibility to make things right. That decision was not made lightly, though he was eventually swayed by argument from Molly’s burly brothers and his own father’s threat to disinherit him. Inevitably, he walked the short walk of the condemned and met Molly at the altar; she smiled a gap-toothed smile and knew that she had got her man.
—
‘They’re still out there, whoever they are. Bastards! They’re … they’re … What’s that word?’
‘Loitering?’ Delores walked over to where Archie sat by the window. She peered through, too, but saw nothing.
‘Yes! That’s it! Loitering!’ Archie sifted a few thoughts dredged up out of a murky pool of brain cells where fact and
fiction rub together too easily; for him it was uncertain territory. ‘They can’t do that loitering thing here. I’ll kick their arses!’
‘Settle down, old fella, you’re way past that.’
Archie pondered that statement for a few seconds before accepting that the remains of his manhood sat bound to a wheelchair, clad in tracksuit pants and yellowed singlet, a tired life of incontinence pads and chin dribble.
‘Marjorie would have sorted them out.’ Another thought and then a chuckle, ‘Bet she’s giving Satan hell.’
‘Archie, you’re getting yourself too worked up. You’ll have an attack and we don’t want that, do we?’ Delores pulled the wheelchair away from the window and towards the television. ‘Your show’s on.’
‘Which one? Not one of those poofy shows, is it?’
‘Gunsmoke, I think.’ She waited for Foxtel to do its thing. In time, Marshall Dillon and Miss Kitty appeared on the screen. ‘Yes, Gunsmoke.’
‘Well, he’s not a queer, you know. A real man. Christ, he never ages, Delores, not like us. I must have killed a Chinaman!’
‘That’s if you’ve had bad luck. You say you’ve killed a Chinaman.’
‘I did say that, didn’t I? Bloody Chinamen, spilling out all over the world. Too free in the loins. Sex mad, the lot of them!’
‘You don’t believe that, do you Archie? Just watch the telly.’
‘World’s goin’ to shit. Doesn’t matter what I believe.’
—
Nathaniel Andrews watched as the nameplate was screwed into the brickwork. The Reverend Augustus Stone, should he ever venture away from the manse and into the elegance of Hamblin Street, might be amazed that the certain cursed sinner of his vitriolic disdain had done pretty well for himself. If there were a God, which Nathaniel somewhat doubted, he had blessed every horse and jockey, every hand of cards and every investment in all the shonky schemes Nathaniel ever undertook. ‘Wounded sinner, indeed,’ thought Nathaniel to himself. ‘We will see, you old bastard!’
4
At the speed Vince was driving, Matthew knew they wouldn’t reach Guildford much before 8pm. Merredin was still a few kilometres in the distance. There he hoped to find a telephone not victim to the buggery of vandalism, so he could ring Delores to let her know he’d be late. She didn’t have a family to worry about. Not five kids and a missus. No, Delores didn’t realise how lucky she was. Vince’s voice drew Matthew from his reverie and he hadn’t really heard much at all.
‘Sorry, Vince, what was that?’
‘I said you were so lucky to have found someone like Delores.’
‘How so?’ Matthew picked his nose to clear an airway clogged with a conglomeration of wheat dust and sheep shit. Ah, the country air.
‘We had real problems to find someone for Dad. Everyone in the family worked, see. So we all clubbed together to pay for a carer but … it just didn’t work out.’
‘What happened?’
‘Dad’s a big man. I take after my mum, y’know, I was the runt of the litter, and Dad, well, one day the carer tried to stop him going down to his grapes so he picks her up and throws her off the steps.’
‘Fair dinkum?’
‘Yeah. We called an ambulance for her but it was Dad they took away. Broke our hearts to see him driven away like that, strapped down and frightened. He just wanted to be with his grapes.’
Matthew could see Vince’s eyes watering up again and assumed it was not a good time to ask whether they should stop at Merredin to use the phone and maybe get some fruit. He looked at the landscape rolling past, a mesmerising action.
‘A bowl of fruit, Matthew – how thoughtful.’ It was near the end: she had not eaten solids for days. A few straggly wisps of hair pushed up gamely from her scalp like some last, valiant hurrah, too little, too late. Rosalie Archer lay under the sheet, her face still bloated and pale from her final chemo, grey lipped and eyes lost somewhere within.
‘You’re looking good, Mum. Nice room …’
‘… for dying in! Your aunt Ali came to visit earlier. She was a blubbering wreck. I told her to come back when she could stop crying but I guess that’s not going to happen. The morphine pump is going in tomorrow.’ Beneath the sheets, Rosalie’s body, swollen and weeping, no longer struggled against the inevitable. In her head the sound of pumping blood beat out a sad, irregular tattoo, counting down to zero hour. She wondered, fleetingly, if she would see Jesus when she finally died; she had a few things to say to him, don’t you worry about that. ‘I suppose they said that to you already?’
‘Yeah.’ They see it every day, those doctors and nurses, giving over the necessary information with a sterilised compassion. Death is a one-legged highwire artist performing at a given hour; the crowd is hushed and expectant, the safety net has been pulled aside. Life continues to hawk his wares amongst the throng: they ask for much but he only has peanuts.
‘Jeez, sorry Vince. Just caught up in my thoughts, again.’
‘I said, it’s a bitch. Poor old man.’ Vince kept his eyes occupied on some point distant. ‘I love you, Dad.’
‘Yeah, St Peter’s ringing the gong and your old man can’t recognise the sound. My dad’s a bit like that. Like he’s reached his use-by date and is still sitting on the shelf. Bloody remarkable. My daughter, Jaylene, says he’s being kept alive by “God”,’ Matthew made quotation marks in the air with his fingers, ‘for some greater purpose, but what does she know? She’s only a kid.’
Vince spoke across to Matthew: ‘Jesus was a kid, once.’ Matthew let that pass. Merredin crawled up to greet them, a pleasant oasis of a town serving a huge sheep and wheatbelt area. Today it maintained the sanctity of Sunday, ensuring survival by pleasing the Almighty, shutting doors to keep out his anger. ‘You’re not a religious man, are you, mate?’
‘Right now, I’m praying for a working telephone.’
‘You can use my mobile.’
‘What! Do you have any idea what they do to your brain? Jeez!’ Matthew shook his head and took a packet of smokes from his breast pocket. ‘There, Vince, on the left.’
As Vince steered around a corner; a phone booth, an airy example of functionalist design, appeared on the left. He pulled over to the kerb, put the twin-cab into park, and killed the motor. Matthew opened the door and eased himself off his seat. Vince tried to call his missus. Outside, the heat was still mean and oppressive, but the worst was over, at least for the day. Matthew lit a smoke, inhaled, and for an instant all was right with the world. The phone worked and Matthew made his call. He stood for a while to finish his cigarette, sucking up the last of its offering and flicking the butt into the gutter.
‘It’s cool,’ said Matthew as he strapped himself in. Vince started the twin-cab up once more and soon the town of Merredin sank down into the landscape behind them.
—
‘It’ll be good to get back to civilisation, won’t it?’ Vince waved a hand over the dashboard, a vague gesture towards the rich belly of the wheatbelt.
‘Civilisation started from this, mate. Husbandry, you know, sowing and reaping, domesticating animals.’ Matthew knew to keep Vince talking lest he start singing again. ‘Don’t assume civilisation is just computers and digital TV.’
‘Ah, I mean it’s gonna be good to be amongst the stuff you’re used to. Your own house and family and stuff. Livin’ in that donger for three weeks straight … I mean, all I think about is going home to my own bed.’
‘I guess so.’
‘And my woman! Man, I can’t wait to get back.’
‘Bit of a stud, hey Vince? Must be true what they say about you Italians. You know, turn off the lights and all you can hear is the rattle of the gold chains and the moaning of the women.’
Vince’s pudgy fingers squeezed the steering wheel a little tighter. ‘Who told you that shit? What I’m saying is that I do what has to be done! Just like my job. Marriage has to be done properly. Italians have been doing it good forever, maybe longer.’
‘Jeez,
settle down, mate. I was only kidding!’
Neither man spoke for a few kilometres. Matthew stared out at a blue sky, at fields, and occasional homes and sheds cast haphazardly about by large unseen hands, some game of the immortals. Somewhere, hidden within the folds of Arcadia, were the working people, those stoic farmers and their hardy, aproned wives. Sensible shoes and patches and pumpkins on the dunny roof, pieces of the past flung off the wheel of transformation that ground ever onwards, taking no prisoners.
‘I think you would really like these.’ Reg Bonner’s gnarly hands offered Matthew worn copies of On Our Selection and While the Billy Boils. The baton change.
‘Thanks, Grandad.’
‘There’re others in that box for you.’
‘Grandad. Why are you going to a home?’
‘You see those books you’re holding?’
‘Yes.’
‘They have a spirit within them, in the beauty of the writing and the story you read. Each time you open those books the spirit comes to life with renewed vigour. Old people are like books. But apart from you, Matthew, no one cares to flick through my pages anymore.’
‘I don’t get it, Grandad.’
‘You’ll understand, one day.’
The twin-cab’s air-con was slowly dying, despite Vince hammering the dash in a spirited fashion every few kilometres. By the time they passed through Doodlakine, the vents just blew hot air and Vince, with a grumbling acceptance, conceded that it had finally shit itself.
‘Jeez, can you believe that. Something else to throw on the scrap heap.’
‘Nah! Bet it just needs re-gassing. I’ve got a fridge like that. Bloke I know in Leonora could fix it for you, no probs. Reckon he could just about fix anything.’
5
There was a certain amount of mystique attached to Ben Poulson, most of it created by himself, for he had led a piss-and-wind existence, frailly supported by untruths and fast-talking for most of his life. He gained a puckish satisfaction that some people in Leonora saw him as an exotic eccentric blown-in from somewhere else; others, men mostly, saw in him a knockabout bloke who loved to spin a yarn while sucking down a stubby. But no one knew who or what he really was. In Leonora, he had found a safe harbour for a life bound up around a brittle ego. Ben managed to walk a very thin line for someone so full of himself.
The Wounded Sinner Page 3