Love, Charlie Mike

by Kate de Goldi

  ‘Typical,’ she says again. ‘They change everything. Everything goes.’ Her face is sad.

  A two-word elegy, I think. Everything goes. Especially the old brainbox.

  ‘Never mind, Gran,’ I say gently, surprising myself. ‘I’ll buy you some malted barley sugars.’

  I don’t know how I drove home. I instantly abandoned the rest of our tour. The joyride in the Honda Civic was over before it had begun.

  Just what every girl needs, I thought, hardly seeing the road. A retarded grandfather. As if a demented grandmother wasn’t enough. No wonder Dad was going off the rails. I felt pretty detached from reality myself.

  ‘Terrible news,’ I said to Brenna, as soon as she arrived round.

  ‘Good,’ she said, lighting up, flopping onto my bed. ‘I need some entertainment. It’s a graveyard at the stepmother’s caffey.’

  I looked at her solemnly. ‘We think our grandfather may have been handicapped.’

  ‘You found out!’ she said, sitting up. ‘Good effort.’ She lay down again. ‘What’s a cripple in the family? Better than a drunk.’

  ‘Handicapped in the brainbox, Brenna.’

  ‘A mental?!’

  I winced.

  ‘Us Irish call a spade a spade, Christy.’ She made a sad face, very insincere. ‘This does make the gene pool look bad.’

  ‘Brenna!’

  ‘Listen,’ she said, drawing back hard, ‘you’re just in grief. Angry stage. Three more steps and you’ll be at acceptance.’

  ‘Up yours.’

  ‘You can put that hat away,’ I said to Finn. He sat on the end of my bed with his chin on his hands.

  ‘But how come we’ve never even heard of Bert before?’

  ‘Would you roll out a skeleton like that?’

  ‘She could be just making it up, you know, what do they call it — confabulating? I read about it.’

  ‘You’re in denial.’

  ‘No,’ he said, very firm. ‘We don’t know the facts.’

  ‘Don’t bring facts into this — I’ve got a bad feeling. No wonder we’ve never heard of Bert. First she lives with him — a major no-no, in the fifties — then Dad finds out Pops isn’t his father — trauma — then he finds out Bert is. Complete mental collapse. I rest my case.’

  ‘Christy, you are not being rational. We don’t know if Bert was even around in 1946.’

  ‘Course he was. She just brought him in to live when she kicked Pops out. But then she went upmarket to Fendalton and she left him behind — couldn’t show him to the Bridge set.’ It all seemed so obvious.

  ‘Photo albums!’ said Finn, smacking his head. ‘We check out Gran’s photo albums, then we sort of casually bring it up with Dad.’

  ‘Then Dad goes right off the deep end. Curtains. Brilliant.’

  I stood up and surveyed my bookshelves. My brain was tired. This new bit of family history was just too much. Locating our ancestry seemed like the dumbest idea I’d ever had, and I wanted only to retreat to a safe, predictable world. I pulled out Anne of Windy Willows and climbed into bed with it.

  ‘Go away,’ I said to Finn. ‘I’m too depressed to talk.’

  ‘Are you too depressed to get undressed as well?’

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘You’re going to give up now? Just because it’s depressing?’

  ‘Go away.’

  The door shut behind him with a soft click.

  Honoured and Respected Sir, I wrote later that night. That’s how Anne of Green Gables wrote to her boyfriend Gilbert as a joke. Only a week until Xmas. Gran still thinks it’s Lent. Finn and I took Gran and the suitcases for a ride in the Honda Civic and she loved it. You’d have been proud of my driving—

  I stopped, guilty that I wasn’t telling the whole story.

  I’d tried to analyse why I didn’t want to tell him about family developments, but I found it hard to put my finger on it.

  ‘I know what it is,’ said Brenna. ‘If you’re not cousins any more—’ she spoke slowly, as if she were working it out properly for the first time, ‘—then you’ve lost a sort of extra closeness, right? And you’re the only girl who would’ve had that closeness with him. So you’re special, right? And if it changes then you’re not special any more. Right?’

  I was amazed at her perception.

  ‘But it’s lying, really, isn’t it? If I don’t tell him?’

  ‘Ma says all intimate relationships are built on ignorance. And maintained with a steady diet of lies.

  ‘But then she’s a cynical bag,’ she said, after some thought.

  ‘I think you should be a counsellor, Brenna.’

  ‘Thank you for sharing that with me, Christy,’ she said, blowing smoke in my face.

  —The vege garden we planted is going to provide Christmas dinner, new potatoes, peas, carrots etc. I even weeded it the other day to get away from Gran. Weeding is strangely therapeutic but it’s impossible to actually hide from Gran — she tracked me down behind the pea vine. Why she’s got such a thing for me and Mum, I’ll never understand. Finn and Dad have it lucky.

  What will the troops have for Xmas dinner?

  I miss you so much, love, Charlie Mike XXXX

  But Finn wasn’t going to leave Bert Willard in the closet. If he put his mind to something he was like a dog with a bone. As Gran would say. He was out on the verandah next morning, crouched beside Gran, leafing through the old photo albums. He gave me his dimpled, butter-wouldn’t-melt smile.

  ‘Get a life,’ I said. I preferred the bliss of ignorance. Gran’s past was better left unprobed.

  ‘Just what I’m trying to do, actually,’ he said.

  I shuddered, thinking of Bert Willard’s blue, blue eyes lurking, possibly, in the pages of Gran’s albums.

  I’d loved those albums when I was younger. They were the old-fashioned kind with stiff black paper, glued photo corners, black-and-white snaps. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen a photo of someone who might be Bert Willard; someone in a gardener’s overall, maybe, or cricket whites. A handsome man with a vacant expression. I didn’t want to know. I lay on the grass with an ear open, listening to Gran naming people, describing places.

  ‘… tennis club … pretty building …’ St Alban’s: wooden, white, gabled; I could see it as clearly as if the book was in front of me.

  ‘… second, or third cousin, was it? … visited every year from Sydney … lost touch …’ Monica Someone, ‘Rich as blazes’, with legs like bananas, a dead fox’s face on her chest and a terrible haircut.

  ‘… tournament … before the war … men’s doubles … Pops and his brother Joe — Sonny’s grandfather — in tennis whites, each with a hand on the smooth curved handles of the Senior Men’s Doubles Trophy; they have the same thick wavy hair, glossy with oil; they have the same wide, pleased grins; they have the same clean-shaven, narrow jaws; but Joe is nearly a head taller and he has a scar across his upper lip where a German shepherd once bit him.

  ‘… summer holiday … down from Auckland … dear little bach …’ Gran and Lenora, on Sumner beach, reclining under an umbrella, squinting into Lenora’s husband’s Box Brownie.

  ‘What did you say your name was, young man?’

  ‘Phineas Phinn,’ said Finn.

  I rolled over on my back and stared up at the sky, dazzling blue and cloudless for the zillionth day in a row. Of course, now that I was a permanent nanny the weather was always glorious. Last summer Gran had been divided between Nurse Maude and Mum; the weather had been perfect and I had spent most of my time with Brenna and the others, carefree and heedless. I’d been in love with Max Fischer, a boy at Linwood (a boy, I saw now, thinking of Sonny). We’d hung out with him and his friends.

  Those were the days, I thought bitterly. No responsibilities, no worries, Mum working only part-time.

  I drifted, drowsy in the sun, half-listening to Finn’s hopeful questions, to the sounds beyond our gate — Jess whistling as she gardened, kids over the road playing on the river ba
nk, boys riding past on their bikes, shouting. No sunbathing in Bosnia, I thought sleepily; they were knee-deep in snow drifts. And where did kids play, with all those snipers around?

  I tried to be conscientious about Bosnia, to dwell on it sometimes, on its tragedy; to think about the fighting and the misery, families smashed, everyday life a struggle, no end in sight. But the harder I thought about it, the less successfully I conjured it up. The truth was, no matter how often I listened to the radio reports, no matter how diligently I read the newspaper, Bosnia seemed otherworldly, the stuff of legends, a remote drama that had been playing for years — a backdrop to my life, but not part of it.

  I’d tried hard with Why Bosnia? but the words always blurred, my mind wandered, I fell asleep. I returned it to the library finally, guilty, but mostly relieved. And I thought too, more than once, if I didn’t know too much, if I didn’t picture the Former Yugoslavia and its problems too vigorously, then I didn’t have to be nervous about Sonny, armed maybe, but vulnerable to the random madness. I much preferred thinking about Sonny at home again, untouched by Bosnia, whole and happy, eyes on me.

  Before B. Day Sonny had ten days pre-deployment leave and he planned to spend a good part of it in Greymouth with his family. I was irritated with this devotion. I wished, secretly, that he was careless, unfilial. I panicked at the thought of him over there, me trapped at school, the days slipping by, precious time wasted. I wanted to be more important than his family. I wanted to come first, and second, and last.

  I cried when he told me his plans. I didn’t mean to — I nodded furiously and smiled in an affirming kind of way, like a strong modern girl — but the tears dribbled out anyway and I had to turn and look out the window.

  We were sitting in the car after my third driving lesson. I’d driven through several sets of lights and four roundabouts and practised parking at Gardenways. Apart from reversing it’d all been a breeze and afterwards, sitting on Sonny’s knee in the passenger seat, I’d felt pleased and clever and peacefully happy. And bold.

  ‘Like the movies,’ I murmured in Sonny’s ear. ‘We’ve steamed up the windows.’ I put out a finger and traced letters in the condensation.

  CharlieMikeLovesSonny.

  ‘In the movies,’ Sonny said against my lips, ‘the guy goes too far, the girl struggles and yells and tries to get out of the car, or she slaps his hand away when it gets too low.’

  ‘I don’t seem to be doing that,’ I whispered, my throat tight, my back goosey under his hands. I put my hands up to his face and kissed him, long and searching. ‘In the movies, the seats go back.’ I reached down for the lever. ‘They lie down, things happen …’

  That was when he told me about going to Greymouth.

  ‘Hey girl,’ he said, when I stared hard through the peephole of dribbling letters I’d made on the window. I wanted to scrub them out. I wanted to climb off Sonny’s knee and out of the car. I wanted to walk home. ‘Hey Charlie.’ His hand came softly under my chin and turned my face so I was looking at him. I blinked fast and squeezed my lips and tried to stop crying. ‘Don’t cry, please.’ He kissed me and hugged me hard. ‘SonnyLovesCharlieToo.’ I started laughing at the silliness of it. ‘But not here,’ he said, ‘and not just ’cause I’m leaving. I want it to be right.’ He was silent, thinking. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t rush you.’

  ‘I want to be rushed,’ I said. ‘There’s hardly any time now. It’s galloping, it’ll be B. Day and you’ll be gone.’ I started to cry again. ‘Something might happen. I might not see you ever again.’

  ‘Babe,’ said Sonny. Baby all right. I buried my face in his neck, hating myself. ‘Nothing’s gonna happen.’ His voice was very firm. ‘Okay? It’ll be fine. Okay?’ He shook me gently.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, looking at him, seeing the concern in his eyes. My heart turned over with love. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Kiss me,’ said Sonny.

  ‘She’s made up that bloody Bert, for sure.’ Finn was standing over me. ‘There’s not a single picture of him in any of the albums — so she says.’

  ‘Dad probably took them out, burnt them.’

  ‘Nothing missing.’ He knelt beside me. ‘Panic over. Back to square one.’

  ‘Just because there aren’t any photos doesn’t mean Bert didn’t exist. You’d be a useless detective. Or a historian.’

  ‘She hasn’t mentioned him today.’

  ‘So what? Most days she doesn’t mention Dad, and he’s her only child. He exists.

  ‘You’re a useless researcher yourself,’ said Finn. ‘You’ve just decided Bert’s the father and given up. Retreated into fantasy.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I hated it when he was perceptive.

  ‘Dreaming about Sonnyboy. The Grand Reunion. Riding off into the sunset.’

  ‘Oh, bugger off and be a normal thirteen-year-old, wouldja? Kick a ball or something, ride a bike, read a war comic, pick your nose.’

  ‘Carry me back to Bahnya Luke-ah,’ he sang, strolling off. ‘Else. I. will. Craaaah.’ I could hear the smirk in his choirboy voice.

  ‘You’ve just dreamt up this stuff about Pops,’ I shouted after him. ‘It’s a figment of your overworked, swotty little brain.’

  ‘Bos-nee-ah.’

  He reappeared from round the side of the house, hands in pockets, the cleverness pinging off him.

  ‘All my hope resides in Bos-nee-ah

  Now it feels as though he’s there to stay

  Oh, how I dislike Bos-nee-ah.

  Why. He. Had. To. Goooo.

  I. Don’t. Knoooow.

  He. Would-int. Say.’

  I put my fingers in my ears, my face down in the grass. I willed myself back to Sonny, our steamy kisses.

  ‘This Bert character?’ said Finn at dinner time, taking me so much by surprise my mouth actually fell open.

  ‘Who?’ said Mum.

  Bert’s name tossed so boldly into the middle of the table was almost horrifying. I couldn’t look at Dad. He was stuffing down salad, rushing for a date with his new love — the club’s ball machine. He’d just finished telling us it was the perfect thing for practising his backhand, that he was thinking of asking the club committee if he could be in charge of its keys. I found this further evidence of his diminished responsibility depressing.

  ‘Bert Willard,’ said Finn distinctly, giving me an unreadable look.

  ‘I know that name,’ said Mum, feeding herself rice from Gran’s plate. Gran had done her usual dinner number and was in her room, packing. ‘Bert Willard, Bert Willard. Why do I know that name?’

  ‘Albert Kitchener Willard,’ announced Dad. ‘Commonly known as Bert the Boarder.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Mum. I stole a look at Dad. He didn’t look traumatised.

  ‘Gran was talking about him,’ said Finn.

  ‘Good old Bert,’ said Dad. ‘He must’ve bowled me ten thousand balls over the years. He was IH, you know, but a bloody good spin bowler.’

  ‘Says a lot about cricketers,’ I said, suddenly hopeful.

  ‘A wonder I didn’t go for cricket,’ Dad ruminated. ‘But I guess after we shifted there was no one to bowl to me.’

  ‘What about when you saw Pops?’ I said. Crazy. Hadn’t I promised myself I’d never mention Pops’ name again?

  ‘Tennis was always Pops’ game,’ said Mum.

  ‘Speaking of which,’ said Dad, getting up.

  ‘How come he lived with you? Bert?’ said Finn.

  ‘Dosh,’ said Dad. ‘Mum needed the money.’

  ‘Then how come she could afford Fendalton?’

  ‘The Gods smiled,’ said Dad. He was knee-bending, flexing, foot up on a chair. These days he seemed in a semipermanent stretch. ‘My grandfather died and left her his money. Which turned out to be a tidy little packet.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, remembering. ‘And Lenora was really pissed off.’

  ‘Family rift,’ said Dad, retying his shoes. Pristine and white, I noticed.

  ‘New sho
es?’

  ‘Diadoras,’ he said. ‘Double action. Ball machine’s breaking them in nicely for Sunday. Anybody coming to watch on Sunday?’

  I was sorry I’d mentioned it.

  ‘Just getting back to Bert,’ said Finn relentlessly. ‘How come Gran chose him as a boarder?’ My stomach gave a skip.

  ‘The old Catholic network,’ said Dad. ‘His parents were in the parish or something, but they were elderly, then they died, and Bert boarded with people. We had him the longest, though. Came after Dad left — I was six — we shifted when I was eleven, so, what’s that, five years?’ He stared at the table, smiling weirdly. ‘He cried, you know. When we shifted. He was like a little kid in that way, emotions just under the surface. But I was embarrassed.’ He winced. ‘Christ, kids can be heartless, can’t they? He was like an uncle or a brother in a way, but I hardly gave him another thought after we shifted. Awful, really.’

  ‘Kids have their own lives,’ said Mum in counsellor mode. ‘They move on.’

  What a nurse Mum was to Dad these days. She was constantly reassuring him, offering small passing comforts. Letting him off the hook.

  ‘So,’ said Finn, nonchalantly, ‘was he more like an uncle or a brother?’

  Oh please. Wear a badge why don’t you? Was he your father in disguise? I gave him a derisive look.

  ‘Dunno,’ said Dad, stretching again, his callous youth forgotten, ‘an older brother, a youngish uncle, it’s all the same — he was about twelve years older than me, I think. But he seemed like a man, you know, even though he was IH. He’d been working since he was thirteen. Gardener.’

  ‘No rest for the retarded,’ said Finn, looking at me triumphantly.

  All right, I get it, I telegraphed him with my eyes. Bert’s not our man.

  ‘Beryl, my darling,’ shouted Dad, wielding his racquet. ‘I’m coming. I am running to you with arms outstretched. Pine for me no longer.’

  ‘What’s with this sudden interest in family history,’ said Mum when he’d gone.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ I groaned, ‘don’t tell me he’s given the ball machine a name.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘I won’t tell you.’