Love, Charlie Mike

by Kate de Goldi

  I dressed slowly, thinking about the words of ‘Cruel War’. I knew it, one of Dad’s sixties numbers, from his antiwar, folk-club days.

  I want to be with him, it grieves my heart so.

  I studied my face in the mirror. It was wan-looking, dull and unanimated; just the countenance for Christmas tree shopping.

  Won’t you let me be with you?

  No, my love, no.

  Separate, I thought, with a sinking stomach. Is he saying we’re separate? I watched my eyes fill with tears. Is he saying he’s in one world and I’m in another, and the gap’s unbridgeable? A perfect pearly tear ran a halting course down my face. The tone of that card was so unlike the rest of Sonny’s letters it made me nervous. I didn’t like that he’d quoted those lyrics — they seemed disturbingly significant.

  ‘C’mon Buttercup!’

  I wiped my eyes quickly, flicked the mascara brush at them.

  ‘Time waits for no man,’ said Dad, flinging open my door.

  ‘It’s customary to knock,’ I said. ‘And if you’re going to start quoting Gran’s bottomless supply of proverbs I’m not coming.’

  ‘Full of the joy of the season, I see.’ He wandered over to my desk, inspected the line-up of identical postcards. ‘Are these army issue?’

  ‘They’re private!’

  ‘I’m not going to read them. How is Lance-Corporal Callaghan, anyway?’

  ‘I’ll tell him you’re inquiring after his health.’

  ‘Ready?’ said Finn.

  ‘I’m ready,’ said Dad. ‘I think Miss Personality is ready. Anybody want a free ticket to the Veterans’ tournament? January. Wilding Park. Courtside seats. Some of the country’s best. Including moi.’

  ‘Could we possibly have a tennis-free morning?’ I said.

  ‘I’ll come along,’ said Finn.

  ‘No, you won’t,’ I said. ‘You’ll be here with me looking after his mother.’

  ‘I could take Gran.’

  ‘Get real.’

  ‘Hey, radical thought,’ said Dad. ‘Let’s all be friends for a while, eh? An hour should be sufficient.’

  ‘Okay,’ I agreed quickly, wanting to ask him something.

  ‘You know “Cruel War”, the song?’

  ‘Ze crewel wah is rauging,’ he bellowed in his Pavarotti voice.

  ‘Shonny hus to faaart

  Ah wanna be wit heem—’

  ‘How does the last verse go?’ We walked out to the sunny morning, down the path, to the car.

  ‘The last verse, um, grieves my heart, mmmm, tomorrowisSunday, mmmm, I’lltiebackmyhairmen’sclothing, dadadadadadaaswemarch along, OhJohnny, yeah, Oh Johnny.’

  ‘Sing it,’ I said.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Please, Daddy.’

  He stood with his hand on the roof of the car and Finn and I leaned against the warm car doors, listening to his mellow baritone.

  ‘Oh Johnny, oh Johnny, I feel you are unkind

  I love you far better than all of mankind

  I love you far better than words can express

  Won’t you let me go with you?

  Yes, my love yes.’

  Yes. It’s yes at the end of the song. They’re not separate at the end of the song. I mentally rewrote my letter to Sonny: maybe she’s not with him physically, I would say, but they’re united in spirit. They’re together emotionally.

  ‘Thanks, daddy dearest,’ I said, waiting for him to unlock. But he was staring across the roof of the car, a vacant look on his face.

  ‘Hello,’ I called. ‘Hello? Anybody home?’

  ‘What?’ He said it absently.

  ‘Jingle bells, holly-and-ivy, season’s greetings, Baby Jesus, Buche de Noel.’

  ‘Christmas tree,’ said Finn, poking Dad gently in the ribs.

  ‘Right,’ he said, a man in a dream.

  ‘Tree farm,’ said Finn when Dad just sat behind the steering wheel, hands reaching vaguely in the direction of the ignition. ‘Start car, reverse, turn right, Linwood Ave. Bob’s your uncle, Fanny’s your aunt.’ Another of Gran’s, of course. ‘Though in this case Bob’s your father—’

  ‘Dad!’ I said, banging him on the arm. ‘C’mon. What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ he said, starting the car.

  An uncharacteristic silence lasted the length of Locksley Avenue and Woodham Road. Dad hunched over the wheel, driving at tortoise pace. ‘War, eh?’ he said suddenly. ‘The boys have to fight for mankind but the girls just want to be with the boys.’

  ‘Very profound,’ I said. ‘I think you’ve been overdoing the tennis, dear.’

  ‘And then when it’s all over and he’s back with her, it’s shot to pieces.’

  ‘So to speak,’ said Finn from the back seat.

  ‘Sonny’s keeping the peace,’ I said.

  ‘True,’ said Dad.

  Finn began whistling ‘Yesterday’ softly. I gave him a ferocious look. ‘Sorry,’ he said hastily. ‘I forgot.’ He whistled ‘Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence’, instead and I laughed. He was annoyingly quick.

  ‘No, no,’ said Dad, banging the steering wheel, snapping out of his unseasonable reverie at last. ‘Oh Tannenbaum!’

  ‘Oh Pine-is Ray-dee-are-tur,’ sang Finn.

  I had two thoughts as we sped down Linwood Avenue to the Christmas tree farm. Wonder what they use for Christmas trees in Bosnia? And, was dementia inherited?

  I never did find out about Christmas trees in Bosnia. But, twenty-four hours later, by the end of our annual present-opening, I’d learned something that made the question of inherited dementia seem suddenly, astonishingly, irrelevant.

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Finn on Christmas night when we were debriefing in my bedroom. ‘One small comic gesture and you make it both the most memorable and the most forgettable Christmas in the history of our family.’

  ‘The history of our family,’ I said tiredly. ‘Sounds like the title of a book. A short book. Wasn’t my fault, anyway,’ I said, in a moment. ‘Not really.’

  ‘No?’ said Finn.

  Technically, present-opening was supposed to go from youngest to oldest but these days, since Gran had the emotional age of a seven-year-old, we let her start. Finn and I gathered up the presents from under the tree and piled them in her lap.

  ‘I see you’ve brought your suitcases,’ said Finn. ‘Expecting a good haul?’

  ‘What an impertinent boy,’ Gran whispered loudly to Mum; ‘And who’s he?’ She pointed to Dad, cross-legged by the blinking Christmas tree, physically present but mentally with Ladies of the Court, his current tennis book. He was in a rather uncommunicative mood, I thought, not his hearty irritating self. He hadn’t even done his usual Christmas number — playing The Messiah at a billion decibels to wake us all up.

  ‘What’ve you got, Gran?’ I said.

  ‘Oooh,’ she said, ‘let me see.’ She unwrapped presents exactly like a child, tearing paper, tossing it aside, desperate for gratification.

  ‘Oh lovely,’ she said. Champagne-coloured satin half-petticoat.

  ‘Oooo, just what I like.’ Red Tulip After Dinner Mints.

  ‘This looks interesting.’ Coronation Street one-off, only-available-on-video special. She turned the packet round, peered at it. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I do like a good read,’ she said to the Large Print hardback Catherine Cookson from the Shirley Library’s Cancelled Books stand. Finn’s present: he didn’t think it was worth spending more than fifty cents since she wouldn’t actually know who it was from and she almost certainly wouldn’t read it, despite what she said.

  As soon as she’d finished she stood up, said thankyouverymuch, in her best Fendalton voice, and, IthinkIhearmytaxi, but Mum gave her a sherry and she sat down again, sipped dutifully and looked suspiciously at the strange young man unaccountably opening gifts in our living room.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Finn, to the Bolivian CD and the wig.

  My two best presents were a book of Matisse postcard
s from Mum and Dad — for sending to Bosnia — and a framed snapshot of Sonny from Finn. I was momentarily overcome with sibling love.

  ‘We have our ways,’ said Finn, pleased that I was pleased.

  ‘I do like a good read,’ said Mum naughtily, when she’d opened her presents: three novels, a recipe book and The Celts: An Illustrated History.

  ‘Your turn, Father dearest,’ I said, sliding some presents over to him. Finn put on his Bolivian CD.

  ‘Is that the doorbell?’ said Gran.

  ‘No,’ said Finn. ‘It’s an Indian nose-pipe.’ The hand-drums and maracas and nose-pipes of the Bolivian Indians serenaded Dad as he unwrapped his presents.

  ‘Oh good, the aftershave from the mother-in-law. And … the tennis book from the loving wife — thank you.’ He started to leaf through Power Tennis Training, with a foreword by Todd Martin.

  ‘And the CD from the sensitive son,’ I said, nudging him.

  ‘Pink Floyd.’

  ‘Bit of nostalgia,’ said Finn.

  ‘Goodness,’ said Gran, ‘I must be moving. What time is the taxi coming, Cushla?’

  ‘Not today, Pat,’ said Mum. But she was off.

  ‘And last but not least,’ I said, handing him my present, beautifully wrapped in glossy paper, ‘the present from the thoughtful daughter.’

  I watched him unwrap it, waiting for his laugh, his smart comment, the look that said, ‘Okay, Buttercup. One to you.’

  For several seconds he looked at the cricket-box packet, slightly puzzled; then he pulled the box out of the packet and turned it over in his hands, gave a shrug, a sort of laugh.

  ‘To go with your goggles,’ I said, ‘you know, to protect you from the young thrusters, the ones who aim for your tender parts.’ He didn’t respond.

  ‘Your goolies,’ I persisted. ‘Your gonads. Nuts. Cods …’ My mouth suddenly felt rather dry, because he was just staring at the box and he wasn’t giving the anticipated reaction at all. ‘And I got a mega-large size to pay proper respect to your manhood and all that, acknowledge the family jewels—’

  ‘Joke, Dad,’ said Finn, quoting Eeyore. ‘Ha ha and Merry Christmas, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Gaiety, song-and-dance, here we are and there we are?’ said Dad, smiling thinly. And as if in reply the Bolivians launched into a fresh energetic number, an incomprehensible dialect.

  Then Dad started to cry.

  ‘Shit,’ said Mum.

  ‘Dad,’ said Finn, ‘it’s just a joke.’

  I was appalled. I had only ever seen Dad cry once — when his old friend Stephen died — and that had been awful enough. But this was different and much, much worse. He kept staring at the cricket box, his face still except for his upper lip, which trembled uncontrollably, and tears just poured down his face.

  ‘Oh, darling,’ said Mum. She moved over to his side and put her arms around him, her cheek against his, and next thing she was crying too.

  ‘But, Mum,’ I started, a great panic rising in my stomach. ‘I didn’t … it’s not … it was just a joke. Mum?’ She gave me an unreadable grimace and squeezed Dad tighter.

  I looked at Finn for help but he was transfixed by Dad, his face sick.

  ‘Dad,’ I said desperately. ‘Dad, I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s going on. Why are you so upset? Has something happened? I’m sorry, Dad. It was just a dumb, dumb joke. I’m sorry.’ I looked at them both under the shimmering, laden Christmas tree, surrounded by a sea of wrapping paper and presents, but crouched and clasping, like Hansel and Gretel abandoned in the Black Forest, only it was the wrong way round because Hansel was crying and Gretel was trying to be brave.

  Christmas? Joy to the World? I wanted to vomit.

  ‘Mum?’ I said, in a plaintive voice. ‘What’s the matter? Why’s he so upset? What did I do?’

  ‘Has something awful happened?’ said Finn shakily.

  ‘Pampa Fiesta!’ shouted the Bolivians.

  ‘Oh shit.’ Mum wiped her eyes with her fists like a kid, half-laughing. ‘Turn those bloody Bolivians off. It’s not your fault,’ she said, looking at me and giving Dad’s back a rub at the same time. Her eyes were red. Dad was wiping his face with some crumpled tissue wrapping, but his head was down, not looking. ‘Nothing awful’s happened. Well, it did once, ages ago — fifty years ago.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bob’ll tell you.’

  ‘Ohhhhhhhh,’ groaned Dad, putting his head in his hands, and suddenly we were all laughing and rolling our eyes, hugely relieved, because it sounded so like the usual, over-the-top him.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mum very firmly, as if this were the finish to an old argument.

  ‘Cushla? Cush-el-ah?’

  ‘Shit,’ said Mum, for the third time.

  ‘Head her off, would you?’ said Dad wearily. ‘Otherwise I might go completely tonto, commit matricide or something.’

  I suddenly knew what he was going to talk about.

  ‘You okay?’ said Mum, kissing him on the lips.

  ‘I feel like sucking my thumb and lying in the foetal position,’ he said. ‘But, yeah, I’m okay.’

  ‘Chocks away,’ said Mum obscurely. She waded through the wrapping paper to the door. ‘Bandits at three o’clock.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Old fighter-pilot talk,’ said Dad, blowing his nose again.

  ‘Which brings me to the War. To the … point.’ He sighed heftily.

  And then, on this hot Christmas morning, the sun pouring into our living room, the smell of the roasting Christmas dinner wafting through from the kitchen, our house, our section, our suburb all quiet as a graveyard, my father stretched out his bare, hairy legs — he was wearing his tennis shorts — leaned back against an armchair, sighed several thousand times, blew his nose often, and eventually told us that his largely absent though legal father was not actually his biological father — surprise, surprise; we kept quiet — and he knew this for certain because Pops’ testicles had been cut off in a ridiculous freak accident in the Western Desert during World War II, four years before his birth.

  How his father’s resulting sterility and trauma had wrecked his parents’ marriage, driven Pops to alcoholism and his mother to infidelity.

  How the accident and his own origins were unknown to him until his father had been hospitalised two years ago and the injury had been revealed by the hospital staff.

  How his father had described the accident to him in graphic detail and told him he’d always thought of him as his son but unfortunately didn’t know — had never known — who his real father was.

  How repeated questioning of his mother had failed to elicit any concrete information, largely because she seemed not to recognise his existence.

  How living with his mother was thus a massive strain — aside from her dementia.

  How Mum had said he would feel so much better if he told us, talked about it, how he could never bring himself to do that.

  How the sum of all this had driven him nuts.

  How the sight of a cricket box on a Christmas morning two years after the secrets had been spilled had, strangely, been the last straw.

  How he was truly sorry for being such a useless, unfocused, bad-tempered, preoccupied, unpredictable, unpaternal old bastard, but maybe Cushla was right, maybe now that it was out in the open, maybe it’d change, maybe he’d feel better, maybe he’d be better.

  Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I thought.

  I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t look at Dad or Finn. We sat, separate and stunned, in the silence which followed this confession. Hot tears gathered on the end of my nose and hung there until I wiped them away with the back of my hand. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Finn put his hand on Dad’s shoulder, pat it gently; for once, he was wordless, though I could almost hear his thoughts.

  Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

  A thoroughly appropriate invocation, I thought later. Christmas and all that.

  ‘Hey Dad,’ I said, later, much later — after turke
y dinner and crackers, after Christmas tea with Mum’s cousin Ginny and her family, after the Queen’s speech and the traditional obscene Address-In-Reply from Ginny, after the carols round the piano and the drunken Irish songs, after the cousins were despatched and Gran was in bed and I’d hugged Dad and cried into Mum’s neck and Finn had wiped away a furtive tear or two, and after we’d agreed we were all too tired to talk about it now but we would tomorrow — after all that, I said the best thing I could think of by way of a replacement present.

  ‘Count me in for the Veterans’ tournament,’ I said.

  ‘Jeez, Buttercup, don’t go all tender on me now,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t take it.’

  ‘It’ll be a labour of love,’ I said. ‘With the emphasis on labour.’

  ‘That’s okay, then.’ He gave a tired smile, swung an invisible racquet, and sloped off to bed.

  ‘Maybe, as backfired jokes go, it’ll end up being A Very Good Thing,’ I said to Finn.

  He bit into the chocolate of his four hundredth scorched almond. ‘Probably,’ he said. ‘Horrible to see Dad cry, though.’ We winced, hearing Dad’s broken voice, remembering the sea of discarded Christmas paper, the wretched man marooned in the middle of it.

  ‘I don’t know what the worst bit is?’ I said. ‘For Dad. Thinking of Pops’ accident, of his awful life? Or knowing that he’s not his father and wondering who is? Or hating, sort of hating Gran? Or finding it all out so late.’

  ‘It’s all awful,’ said Finn, inspecting his almond, sucked naked. ‘Terrible.’

  ‘And Pops—’

  ‘Testicles. You can’t even know what that would be—’

  ‘Don’t.’

  I thought of the grandfather who wasn’t my grandfather. I thought of the Western Desert — a remote historical concept, like Bosnia — with its own set of associated names and faceless personages, just like Bosnia. I knew them from Pops, from my other grandfather, from the radio, from The World at War: Rommel, Montgomery, Eighth Army, El Alamein, Tobruk, Freyberg, Charles Upham, VC and Bar. In that burnt dry landscape, flat all the way to the horizon, my grandfather’s testicles had been neatly sliced from his body by a piece of rogue fencing wire escaping with lethal force from its binding.