Smythe's Theory of Everything

by Robert Hollingworth

  She stares at me. ‘Mind’ (pause) ‘your own’ (pause) ‘business!’ We puff away on our smokes.

  ‘Ever see The Life of Brian?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The movie, Life of Brian?’

  ‘It’s probably a classic, is it?’ She does a quote sign in the air.

  ‘Not really. But there’s this scene where Brian appeals to the masses who’re all shouting for his head. Brian yells to them, Why go along with this, you have to be different! The mob yell back, Yes, we are all different. Then one little bloke way back in the crowd puts up his hand and says, I’m not.’ Pheona drops her butt and screws it flat with her jungle-pattern shoe.

  ‘Are you different, old man?’

  ‘Well, I’m not like any of these in here.’

  ‘Yeah, but are you different?’

  She’s asking me; can you believe it? What the hell would she know about it?

  Suddenly Jim comes round the corner in his chair and crashes into the brick. He has more skin off his knuckles from hitting things than a prize fighter. You’d think he’d learn.

  ‘Slow down, Pop,’ Pheona says. ‘What’s the rush?’

  Just this minute Dell came in collecting money for one of the nurses in the west wing who’s leaving.

  ‘Well done!’ I say. ‘Nice to see that someone is escaping this joint!’

  ‘Think you could toss in?’ says Dell.

  As I have never met the woman in my life I wonder why I am to give money. Insult to injury.

  ‘I don’t know her,’ I say.

  ‘Well, she knows you.’

  ‘Then why doesn’t she chuck me a few bob.’

  ‘Come on, Jack. A bit of loose change?’

  ‘Sorry, Dell. None of my change is loose. It’s all ear-marked for something.’ Hopefully she’ll have more luck with others who won’t remember that the donation was given, let alone recall a nurse from the other wing.

  I have just been out to the payphone near the front office - getting rid of a bit of ‘loose change’. I rang Lisa. Saturday morning is always the best time to catch her. Could you please bring my fishing rods? There is a man here who wants to see them. Maybe he wants to buy them, I say, though of course I have no intention of selling anything. But this is my strategy: as nothing has worked so far I need new reasons to recover what has always been mine. I ask her also for my clock radio. ‘My traveller’s clock runs out of battery and I miss breakfast.’ And my petanque balls. ‘Someone wants them for a championship.’

  She asked me whether I enjoyed my day at the museum. ‘Yes’, I said, ‘thank you very much. Now can I have my possessions? It’s urgent’. She was quiet on the line a long while and then she said, ‘OK, Dad. I’ll dig out what I can and bring them over.’

  ‘The fishing tackle box too? There’s a carton that’s got all the bits inside it. I might have a buyer.’

  ‘OK I’ll dig it out.’ I think I might have had a break-through this time. I was careful not to mention the photos.

  Then I rang Chris. I could hear very strange music playing in the background, I think Indian, with a lot of wailing and high-pitched instruments.

  ‘Hang on a sec,’ he says. He turns down the music.

  ‘How are you, Dad?’

  ‘Good, Chris. Are you in the middle of something?’

  ‘No, no, not at all. Just finished my meditation and then I turn the volume up. I find the vibrations fill my body - like a top-up. Gives me positive energy through the day.’

  ‘Yes, I could feel it at my end too.’

  Chris laughs. He thinks I’m joking. I want to ask when I might see him again but I decide against it.

  ‘What’s on for the weekend?’ I say.

  ‘There’s a group of Buddhist monks here on a visit from Tibet,’ he says. ‘They’re making a sand mandala in St Kilda and I’m going over to watch them do it.’

  ‘Sounds interesting. Do you think I’d be interested?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. I might go back again tomorrow. If I do I could pick you up. I’ll leave a message with the receptionist.’

  ‘I thought you were interested in Hinduism?’ I said.

  ‘I am. But it doesn’t mean it’s the only path. I have a lot of respect for the Buddhists, especially the Tibetan ones.’

  ‘Have you spoken to your sister lately?’

  ‘Not in the last week or two. Why?’

  ‘I just think you should, that’s all. Never let the gap widen like it did with your Aunt Kitty and me. It’s a bad thing to do in a family, Christopher. Why don’t you give her a ring?’

  ‘OK, I might this afternoon. If I get back in time.’

  ‘And ask her to return my things, will you? It will have more weight if you say it.’

  ‘OK, Dad, I’ll ask her.’

  ‘The fishing rods, box of tackle, clock radio and the petanque balls. You got that?’

  ‘Yeah, OK, Dad.’

  ‘Four things, Chris: Rods, tackle, clock, balls. Got it?’

  ‘I got it Dad, OK?’

  ‘Otherwise, I could get her to drop them at your place?’

  ‘No, I’ll talk to her.’

  ‘OK. Thanks son. I’d really appreciate it.’

  I hang up. If that doesn’t work, nothing will.

  It was nearly six months before Kitty finally made it to Melbourne. She would have been thirty-nine then. It was 1981, the year the first desktop computers came on sale. I remember going once to a science display with Lisa and Chris. Chris was eighteen then and mad about science. I’m surprised that he eventually went into photography. Now he is watching out for a computer for me, a PC. I am hoping he can find a good second-hand one that I can set up in here. With a computer I’d really be ‘the talk’ among the oldies (although most wouldn’t know an Apple Mac from a piece of fruit).

  That day in ‘81 we walked around the science display and there it was, one of the first computers for home use. Black-and-white screen in a grey box, a DOS system and operated by key commands. And I remember that object as though it was yesterday; I knew there and then that the world had changed.

  Technology, it was the big thing of the eighties and suddenly it seemed to make the youth of the day go all ordinary again. The counterculture was over, supplanted by education which got everyone thinking exactly the same. Without anyone noticing, life lost any sense of urgency and people stopped trying to change things. People seemed to get their sense of meaning from the latest innovation: toys and gadgets, tools and appliances, hardware and software - professional levers to climb the ladder and wedge into the system.

  In terms of popular culture, many of the big groups of the eighties were actually conceived in the seventies - AC/DC, Midnight Oil, Genesis, Police, Split Enz. In the eighties, it was less about the music - or the message as they used to say - and more about the money. And what about the rest of life? Same thing. I’m not saying it wasn’t a good time, just that the world started to think of everything as ‘product’ - buy and sell, promote and project, new and novel - and a lot of it excessive and superfluous, like the endless types of milk we now get in the supermarket. Correct me if I’m wrong.

  Kitty did not arrive on a motorbike; she came by train. I was working at Wilson & Turnbull then, some of it signing but mostly doing the screenprinting. I had a knack for it and could do the set-up, run the proofs and make ready for the final print-run faster and cleaner than the more experienced printers. It was noisy, smelly and repetitive but at the end of the day you knew you’d done a good day’s work. The proof was in the product. When Kitty arrived I took the day off which the boss was not happy about, but I’d rather get the sack than not be there for Kitty.

  I met her at Spencer Street and we walked up to the tram stop. I kept standing apart from her just so I could see how she moved, how she reacted to things, following in the wake of her self-certainty. Even hefting a suitcase she exuded a kind of class that is common in inner Sydney. I watched her looking all around, taking in the scene an
d learning from the simple experience of just walking the street.

  Back in my room at the Ceswick pub, Kitty plonked down on the bed and looked around. She was sitting on her hands and she swung her legs. She still had on her creaky leather coat and now I could really smell her perfume, a gentle fragrance that brightened the place all on its own. She looked healthy. I tried to see if there were any outward signs of her past occupation. There were none. I tried not to think about it - when you’re over something it’s best to erase it. Kitty just sat there on the mattress and swung her legs. Needless to say, she wasn’t impressed with the room. But that day nothing could dampen her happiness and she was pleased to be closing one door and opening another.

  ‘First thing tomorrow, we look for a flat,’ she said smiling.

  ‘Can’t. I’ve got to go to work. But we could do it Saturday.’

  ‘Can’t wait ‘til Saturday, Jacky boy. I’ll start looking and you come along when you can.’

  By the end of the week we had a nice little place in Richmond and within a month she had all her things down from Sydney. She got a job managing a bar in Fitzroy through someone she knew in Darlinghurst. And that is how Kitty reorganised our lives.

  She left her past behind. She told me about her Sydney love affairs; the guy who promised everything but neglected to mention he already had a wife; the long relationship she had with her first boss from the hotel industry. Kitty said the affair was rocky, like a seesaw: up in the air one minute, feet on the ground the next. Finally, she said, she just walked out of the playground.

  It was nearly three months before I found the moment to ask her about Dad. I came home to find her in the yard trying to put new screws in the leg of an outdoor table. She had it upside down on the concrete.

  ‘Found it in the hard rubbish, on McKean Street,’ she said. ‘Carried the fucking thing all the way back.’

  Her skin was naturally pale but this summer she’d tanned and in her white singlet top, her arms and shoulders looked coppery. She often wore the white singlet -

  she was what men might call ‘curvy’ and it suited her. I noticed that she’d also changed her hair; cropped above her shoulders jet black and straight, it hung across her face as her head tilted. I looked at the table.

  ‘Remember the one we had at home?’ I said. ‘It was just like it.’

  ‘It wasn’t like this,’ she said. ‘It might have been white but it was made of metal.’

  ‘No it wasn’t. Dad made it in the garage.’

  I think it was the first time he’d been mentioned since we were teenagers.

  ‘Do you think you’ll go and see Mum?’ I said.

  She drew her hair back behind her ear. I noticed she wasn’t shaving her underarms.

  ‘I might. Sometime.’

  ‘She’s changed, you know. I think she’s got her act together.’

  Kitty looked at me. ‘So do you want to see her again?’

  I looked away. ‘Not much point. I’ve seen her once already. What will I learn from another visit?’

  Kitty turned the table up the right way and crawled under it.

  ‘Mum said a few things about you and Dad,’ I ventured. I could not see her but I’m sure she stiffened. She continued working on the table.

  ‘And what might that have been?’

  ‘She said Dad molested you?’ There was a short silence and then Kitty emerged, put her brown arms along the table top. She fixed her clear blue eyes on me.

  ‘It’s not your business, Jack. And if anything happened it was so long ago I can hardly remember.’

  She got under the table again. Over the fence I heard beer barrels bouncing on the footpath outside the pub.

  ‘I … I wondered why you never said anything?’

  A steel barrel struck another and Kitty emerged.

  ‘Jack, it had nothing to do with you, OK? I’d completely forgotten about it and I can’t see why you need to remind me now.’

  She gathered her tools and took them inside.

  About nine months into our new life together Kitty came home with a man. Naturally, she always had dates - she attracted friends like flies - but this was something else. I knew the moment he walked in that I wouldn’t like it. The look of him - as though he already had the future mapped out: his career, his finances, his social life, and Kitty. And I could tell immediately he certainly didn’t include me in the picture. And what irritated me most was that he was a really nice guy - which left no room whatever for negotiation.

  The bastard could cook, sew, type, speak Italian, and hold a conversation about politics, fashion, art, you name it. Matthew Banes was his name - Kitty called him Matty - and he was about ten years older than she was. That made him going on fifty at the time - who knows, he might this day be in a nursing home like me. He was tall and good-looking for an older man - though I thought the scarves he wore were a horrible affectation. Kitty seemed to really go for him and there was a long period where she didn’t get in until very late.

  Not that I was sitting around twiddling my thumbs. I had my own dates, off and on. Sometimes I’d go along to the Rainbow - the pub where Kitty worked - and it was not uncommon for her to introduce me to one woman or another, usually in her forties, who was happy to date someone like me. We’d go out to dinner or to the movies, and more than once we’d end up back at her place.

  The good thing about middle-age is that people know what they want, why they want it and they don’t waste time getting it. It may sound like a boast but it was rare for one of my dates to be still clothed half an hour after arriving at her place. If they did, it was only because they were sick or tired or emotionally stressed. But all things being equal, we’d be on the bed before the kettle boiled.

  If I am to be baldly honest, I found it boring. After a while a pattern emerged and in the dim light of one bedroom or another, with one person or another, it was hard to tell the events apart, hard to find any sense of purpose or sense of surprise - in the way that a natu-ralist might suddenly spot a new species in territory he’s walked over before. No doubt my partners felt the same. What we really wanted was companionship but you don’t get that anywhere, at least not the kind that’s worth keeping. At best there’d be conversations about work or weather or which is the best restaurant, at worst, just dumb silence. Nobody’s fault; just a failure to connect.

  It got so I never expected a relationship to last, and it didn’t. But to tell the truth, it never bothered me. I use again the old tennis analogy. You can’t ever be much good at it if you don’t really like the game, if you aren’t terribly inspired. And just like tennis, some people are very good at relationships, some are average and some are just wasting their time. I’m average, or maybe a bit below.

  In my experience, the only relationship that really works is when two people who are very good at it happen to cross paths. If one is good and the other average it doesn’t work; two average only lasts a while; two bad players is a disaster. But two top sports in the relationship game can really pull an audience - on the same court at the same time and starting at love all round.

  Also, it’s not a competition.

  If I did have a date, I made sure I never brought her back to our flat to stay over. How could I expect Kitty to avoid the practice if I didn’t honour it myself ? Of course Kitty hardly complied.

  Only a week after Kitty introduced me to Matthew, the crunch came. The three of us were watching a video and when it finished, Matthew and Kitty just sat there until I was obliged to get up and leave. For a short while I heard hushed voices and finally Kitty’s bedroom door clicked shut. Then began what I can only describe as the most uncomfortable experience of my life. First there was a lot of thumping and bumping and I feared some violence was involved. But then all went quiet until I began to hear that older man’s throaty sighs. Soon there were repeated moans, each one rising higher like a woodwind ascending a staircase. And then suddenly a long pause followed by one heaving groan and I dared not imagine what Kitty was
doing to him right then, at that particular moment. I found myself gripping the sheets.

  Half an hour later Matthew left the house and Kitty saw him right out onto the footpath. From the kitchen I could see her in her dressing gown in the lamplight, giving him a final hug and a kiss goodnight. As soon as he was gone I returned to my room and I heard Kitty come in and quietly make a cup of tea in the kitchen.

  It became a regular routine and a few nights a week that’s what I came to expect. In the end I’d leave the house if that fifty-year-old bloke arrived, and then I’d come home at an hour when I knew he’d be gone. Of course I didn’t complain; it was Kitty’s life and that’s all there was to it.

  Only once did I do my block. It was summer and on certain days Kitty would sunbake in the backyard. She wore a little black bikini and often spent the afternoon just lying out there, reading. She sometimes asked me to join her but I wasn’t much for sunbaking - I burn easily and get no pleasure lying in the sun’s glaring rays with perspiration running.

  One Sunday, Matthew turned up. Invited? I don’t know. But before long the two of them were out on the back lawn with towels and bottles of drink. Matthew stood there stripped down to his togs and I saw clearly that, for a man of fifty, he was quite well built in a Hawaii Five-O kind of way. Kitty stepped up and kissed him - and then suddenly she dropped all her clothes. She stood there in the sun stark naked and I swear she looked like a goddess. Matthew saw it too and took hold of her breasts.

  I could stand it no longer. I marched straight out onto the porch.

  ‘Have you two gone completely mad?’ I said. ‘Can’t you see that half the windows of Richmond are pointing at you?’

  Kitty laughed.

  ‘Oh, Jack, don’t be so traditional!’

  She pulled a towel around her.

  ‘This is my flat too, Kitty. I have to live here as well, you know.’

  ‘Sorry, Jack,’ said old Matty. ‘You’re dead right mate, won’t happen again.’