Smythe's Theory of Everything

by Robert Hollingworth

  ‘Put your hands here,’ I said.

  At this point I would begin to take stock: Conservatively dressed, a few years older than myself - perhaps in her early thirties - spends her money on hair, makeup but not fashion or jewellery; just the one ring. Rings are good - they’re a Godsend for a psychic. Unmarried; no obvious children; office job maybe; timid though unpredictable; driven to sudden unconventional acts. Knows Charlotta so she’s been before.

  ‘Hmmm,’ I said, taking her right hand. ‘You’re right-handed.’

  ‘Left, actually.’

  ‘That’s what I mean. Those who are left-handed have their right hand as their Birth Hand. It shows what things you’ve inherited from others, aspects of your original character.’ I studied her harder and spread her fingers as a doctor might do. I then took her left hand.

  ‘In your case this hand shows your individuality and your potential.’ She caught her breath. I knew that’s what she wanted to know - and the state of her current situation.

  ‘You have a strong heart, your health is good.’

  ‘I’ve not been well, Jonathon.’ I called myself Jonathon in that room - it sounded more authentic.

  ‘When I say good I mean you have the strength to overcome things. Your life line shows you have the energy and … and your heart line says you have an emotional involvement that needs some work.’ I saw her body stiffen.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There’s something troubling you.’

  ‘You’re right, there is!’

  ‘It’s … it’s to do with this ring.’ I looked at the cluster of small garnets set in pink gold - quite out of fashion. An heirloom? I touched the ring lightly.

  ‘I see a previous owner.’ Exactly why I said it I cannot say; it was completely uncharacteristic and an unnecessary risk. The woman sat bolt upright.

  ‘A previous owner?’

  ‘Well, it’s not exactly clear. When I look at your life line …’

  She snatched her hands away.

  ‘I knew it! You’ve hit the nail exactly, Jonathon! That’s the very reason I came here and you’ve cleared the matter up perfectly!’

  ‘I have? Before we come to any conclusions maybe we should …’

  ‘That fuckin’ bastard. You’re very good, Jonathon, very good.’ She put ten dollars on the table, and before I could stop her she turned around and left.

  The bath fiasco continues - 6.00 a.m. on the dot. It appears to be the last task of the nightshift before they are relieved of duty. I got dragged out again and made to do my usual ‘strip tease’ for the large and lumpy Jan Osborne, twenty years my junior. Hope she gets a thrill out of it as I most certainly do not. I have no idea what they put in the bathwater but it has an elegant scent somewhere between nitric acid and sump oil. It cannot have been more than a year ago that a nursing home was taken down for giving their inmates kerosene baths. I think this stuff is something similar. And I do not know why the nurse cannot leave the room. ‘Oh come on, Mr Smythe,’ she says. ‘I’ve seen it all before.’ Which ‘all’ is she referring to; has she inspected the particulars of every man on earth?

  At lunch it was announced that some bright spark has invented ‘Art Group’. Naturally I am refusing to go. I could in fact teach them a thing or two - about colour harmony and the use of the brush - but I have no intention of it. Dooley said at dinner he made a picture as good as the abstract over the bar in his pub. Said that picture was done by ‘none other than Picasso himself ‘. Can you believe it? To my knowledge there are very few Picassos in Australia let alone one hanging over the bar in Dooley’s pub.

  Also at dinner a discussion broke out about the name of our illustrious camp, ‘Eden’.

  ‘About as original as peas and mash,’ I say.

  ‘And pork chops,’ says Clem.

  ‘There’s a town up the New South coast called Eden,’ volunteers our Dooley.

  Jim pipes up: ‘I used to have a little house at Eden Valley. In the Barossa, out of Adelaide. The block was a wedding present from my in-laws. I built a nice little weekender on that block. Eden Road, Eden Valley.’

  ‘Now there’s a good site for our concentration camp,’ I say. ‘ Eden at Eden Road, Eden Valley.’

  I now look in my Melways and I see that around Melbourne there are twenty-one Eden streets, avenues or courts. Twenty-one! Who names these streets? No doubt some artless public servant with the imagination of a Bogong Moth. There’s also seventy-six Elizabeth Streets and eighty-three Georges. And one hundred and fifty-six Oaks, Elms and Wattles, forty-one Souths and fifty-two Norths - in the one city!

  Just tell me, what would be wrong with a Trout Street? Or a Poa Court, which is one of our most common native grasses - or even a Grass Street. But not one!

  The following Saturday I arrived at Charlotta’s to find a man standing on the footpath. He did not look like someone waiting for a reading. He looked more like someone waiting for his rugby coach, or someone waiting for his T-shirt to tear sideways. Should I approach the shop? Perhaps I should just walk right past? I did not need Charlotta’s clairvoyance to see that something wasn’t right. I put my keys in the lock.

  ‘You the palm reader?’ The man looked down at me, his arms propped out from his sides, his thick fingers hanging loose.

  ‘Sorry, not open today. I’m just collecting some …’

  ‘You the idiot who spoke to Sharon?’ He pushed into the passage and I was forced to walk backwards ahead of him. I found myself in the tiny room, crowded with the two of us; the man’s frame seemed to double in size. ‘You’re the idiot told Sharon about the ring. You’re the idiot broke up my relationship. Know how hard it is to pull a bird like Sharon?’ He looked me up and down. ‘Nah, ‘course you wouldn’t. Wouldn’t have a fuckin’ clue. Palm reader! Tell you what, you come near Sharon or me again and you’ll be readin’ my palm through the back of yer fuckin’ head, got it?’ He slammed his fist into his open hand and for a second it stopped my heart.

  I said nothing. I wanted to, but the impact of his smashing fist rendered me mute. He stood there a second longer and then lumbered out. I rushed to the door and locked it. I waited a whole hour before going home.

  On the Monday I told Charlotta - she might be compromised.

  ‘Forget it!’ she said. ‘There’s always the odd crackpot. Some people are afraid of the truth. Just be careful what you reveal to them.’

  ‘But I didn’t tell the woman anything. I didn’t see anything to tell her. I didn’t …’

  ‘The truth has a way of appearing mysteriously, Jack. You get mixed up with something as serious as palmistry and you have to wear the consequences.’

  I had intended to quit right then but Charlotta wouldn’t hear of it.

  ‘Take charge, Jack. Take back what’s rightfully yours.’ But deep down I knew the whole business wasn’t rightfully mine and that I wasn’t rightfully sure about any of it, including the state of my own future.

  Regardless, two weeks later I found myself once again sitting at the little card table, analysing the palm of a pleasant young woman who took the words I offered with great sobriety, and again I felt as if I was in control, doing something worthwhile. I made sure to say positive things and I stretched her Life, Head, Heart and Fate lines as far out as I could. We were both pleasantly satisfied with the outcome and the young woman was just about to leave when ‘Sharon’ suddenly appeared in the passageway. My heart leapt and my life line crept up under my shirt sleeve.

  ‘I need another consultation,’ she said, even before the first woman could make an exit.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t think I can do that, Sharon.’

  I saw her rock backwards.

  ‘You even know my name!’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No I don’t. I mean your boy friend told me. He was here …’

  ‘Garth? Garth came to see you? But he said he doesn’t believe in all this stuff …’

  ‘He didn’t exactly come for a reading. He came to warn … he came
to ask me not to see you; not to tell you anything else.’

  ‘Well, I don’t care. He can’t stop me finding things out. I want you to take another look.’

  It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps with careful words I could undo the previous reading; I could fix things up. I locked the front door. I sat down with her and tried to explain my error with the ring.

  ‘Oh, forget that. I want to know about my prospects. Do you see Garth and me together or apart?’ She slapped her palm out in front of me.

  I tried to focus. I saw no lines, no branches of the future, no mounts of energy or talent.

  ‘It looks very positive,’ I said. ‘I think he could be the one.’

  ‘Damn it!’ she said. ‘I don’t think I even like Garth most of the time, let alone love him. I was hoping I could move on.’

  ‘Well, you can if that’s what you want. There’s room here for change, if that’s what you’re really looking for. But I also see something very important in your life line. It says you should keep your visit here top secret - you should tell no-one, if you really want your future to work out successfully.’ But it was my future I wanted to work out successfully and my life line that looked a little wobbly.

  It is now getting on for 10.00 p.m. and old MP Jim Southall has just left, barrelled out of my door in his chair taking the doorjamb with it. Came over about an hour ago and I did not have the heart to kick the old man out. The door stands open because we are not allowed to close it until we are in bed - the problem being that people think you’re open for business.

  Jim sticks his head in. ‘Doing anything?’ he says. No, just marking time until you arrive, uninvited.

  ‘I thought you might be interested in a game of cards,’ he says.

  ‘Don’t play cards. Never had the call for it.’

  ‘Well, you do now. Do you want to try a few hands?’

  ‘Not my interest, Jim. Now if you’d said petanque I might have taken you up - except you have to go outdoors for that, a concept that doesn’t exist around here.’

  ‘They have the doors locked with a security code,’ Jim says.

  ‘Very true,’ I say. ‘Pity if there was ever a fire.’

  Jim’s wearing a fawn cardigan, neatly buttoned over a pale blue shirt and olive green trousers. No colour sense at all.

  ‘We’re imprisoned, Jim,’ I tell him.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t go that far.’

  ‘What if we wanted to get out? How could anyone escape this place?’

  ‘Why would we, Jack? Where would we go?’

  ‘I rest my case, you see: imprisoned.’

  I can see we are in danger of beginning another cycle.

  ‘What’s petanque?’ Jim says at last. ‘I know I’ve heard of it.’

  I don’t want to go into it but it’s clear he’s not leaving.

  ‘A ball game. Big, shiny metal balls, or boules. You have to get them near the white ball. I like it because you can play on your own if you prefer it. And it’s the only sport you can play with a ball in one hand and a glass of chardonnay in the other.’

  ‘We could do it up the passage.’

  I laugh. I hear the sounds coming out of my throat and realise that I haven’t laughed in ages. I do not intend making a habit of it.

  ‘Imagine the look on Jean Stinson’s dial if you started dropping two-pound steel balls on her carpet!’

  Jim grins, or kind of grimaces, and I wonder whether he might be in some pain. I notice the rashes and scabs rising from the neck of his pale blue shirt; they look rather aggressive and I keep my fingers crossed that he won’t touch anything. Then I begin wondering again whether the scabies might have originated with him. He is in need of a haircut, with wispy white fluff points everywhere, licked down here and there with some Straight 8 but it seems likely that the scabies or even nits might be breeding in there.

  ‘Where’d you get your hair cut?’ he says. He must have read my mind! I try not to look surprised.

  ‘From the sex-starved, stand-over one who likes to look at strangers in the nude.’

  ‘Jan did it? She can’t handle the scissors, can she?’

  ‘Course not! I thought that was pretty bloody obvious!’ I tap my skull. ‘I hope to fix it up myself. As soon as I get my Wahl and combs. Chris is going to deliver them - I hope!’

  ‘Can you cut hair?’

  Uh oh.

  ‘No, not really. I was given the Wahl by my ex-wife who was a beauty therapist. Before she died.’

  ‘I was going to say, I need a …’

  ‘Ex-wife that is. In other words, we were already apart when she died from the cancer.’

  ‘Terrible thing that, breast cancer.’

  ‘Ovarian, it was. Right down here.’ I touch my abdomen where they took out my gall bladder.

  ‘You got any kids, Jim?’

  ‘A daughter. And she has a daughter as well. A real trouble-maker. Gives her mother hell. I always hoped I might have a son and then a grandson. Maybe someone who would go into politics. But all I have is a rebel granddaughter who thinks she can rearrange the entire world.’

  ‘The young, Jim. Youth is wasted on the young.’

  ‘George Bernard Shaw.’

  That surprised me; a bloke of his age still having the marbles to remember something like that.

  Fortune, good and bad, comes regularly and at strange times. Tell someone they’ve got some good news coming, or tell them to watch out for strange twists ahead and of course it’s just a matter of course. No future is ever straight sailing and every open palm has a few cracks in it.

  One afternoon Jeff and I were stopped at the lights, me in the passenger seat, Jeff forking mussels out of a jar in his lap. Jeff always kept a jar of mussels in vinegar propped between his seat and mine and if we were ever held up in traffic, he’d take a fork from behind the visor and prong those mussels right out of the jar. Suddenly a black Ford ute pulled up beside us. I just happened to glance sideways and at the same moment the driver of the ute did as well, a big tradie with a tattooed arm hanging halfway down the door. His eyes widened.

  ‘You!’ he yelled - I heard it through the glass.

  The lights changed and Jeff accelerated, painfully slow. The ute cruised alongside and Jeff seemed not to notice. I slid into the seat, my reddened face casually hidden behind my trembling palm. I looked ahead, praying for no more traffic lights. Jeff crept up to top gear and the ute stayed with us. Then we came to a single lane and the man pulled in behind.

  ‘Look at that idiot!’ said Jeff. ‘Right up our clacker, what’s wrong with these drivers?’

  Eventually the black ute began to pass and came up on the driver’s side. The man screamed something abusive, Jeff wound down his window.

  ‘And you can go to hell too!’ he yelled. ‘Bloody moron!’ I shrunk further beneath the dash and it seemed ages before the man finally took off up the street, his tyres squealing. I knew he’d left us for now, but what worried me most was that we had Burgess Signs written across the truck door with a phone number and an address.

  But weeks passed and no new twist in my fortunes came. Aunty Deb would have said the cards fell nicely, Charlotta’s grey eyes would have twinkled from deep within her mascara. But one day Venus must have moved right out of my constellation.

  I was up on the old Coy and Bensen building (where there now stands a Myer store), installing a big canvas banner. That building had been condemned so the owners put a high, form-ply wall around it to keep out the public. And while they were waiting for the site to be sold, they leased the brick facade as advertising space. Jeff and I made the banner, 40-foot-long. Ipana Toothpaste. If you remember that sign, it was me who scaled up the picture of the girl’s smiling face. The owners of the building installed the scaffolding and I climbed up there, hauling the rolled-up banner behind me.

  I was working on my own then - Jeff was at last preparing to retire - but it wasn’t a big job. All I had to do was raise the banner and tie it off so the wind could
n’t get under it. About noon I stopped for lunch, sitting high on the platform swinging my legs. I remember watching the cars and trucks down below and I flicked a bottle-top right out over the traffic. You can’t flick bottle-tops these days because they’re now lined with plastic instead of cork.

  But as I looked down, the pleasant scene before me turned incrementally dark as I suddenly became aware of a lumbering figure marching along the wide footpath below me, all the while looking up, directly at me, perched high on the edge of the platform. I recognised him immediately. I gulped air and my heart bounced like a bagged cat. Sharon’s Garth! It was bloody Garth again! What right-minded person would name their son Garth? Clearly, no right-minded person - he was, no doubt, the son of another defective.

  Down below he marched back and forth on the other side of the form-ply barrier and gave it a decent whack every now and then to placate his boiling intentions. I stood up and backed away just as he worked out which panel was used as an entry. He came onto my side of the barrier and without a word, marched towards the bottom of the scaffold. I stepped back - and then I tripped. I caught hold of a rope tied above and it should have saved me. Instead, I pulled a row of bricks right off the top of the building. Luckily they missed me on the way down but they hit the platform with such force that they sent me flying. And that is all I remember - I heard the crash of the bricks, felt my body shift and that is all.

  When I came to, I was in hospital with Kitty standing over me. By the look on her face I knew something bad had happened.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I said. I must have been still under the drugs; I think I meant to say, ‘Am I OK’, I really don’t know. Anyway it became a standing joke, me in traction and asking Kitty if she was OK. Turned out I had compound fractures in both legs. I was told they found me hanging upside down ten metres below the sign with my legs through the iron scaffold. Oddly, my first thought was that at least it got Garth off my case.

  I was in The Prince of Wales for sixteen weeks. And then a lot of rehab, practising to reacquaint myself with my rebuilt pins - more metal in them than the Six Million Dollar Man. It was lucky I was only thirty. But something else changed during that rehabilitation. I stopped worrying about the future. You might think you know something about it and even pretend to have some control over it but you don’t really. All you can do is hope it will arrive in a form you’ll like. But you can never be sure. And so it was that the fall off the scaffold knocked fortune-telling right out of my system and I resolved to never glance at my palm again.