‘Boss who?’
‘Collier.’
‘Collier the Hun?’
‘That’s the one,’ she says.
‘Well, stuff her,’ I say.
‘Stuff her family as well,’ says Pheona.
I look at her leaning against the door jamb. She seems a bit different this week, dressed a little more normal. She looks more like we used to look in the sixties. Except for the tattoos. Back then you went to a circus to see a tattooed lady.
‘Suppose I could go out for a smoke,’ I say. She takes hold of my chair and I drop the little paint brush in the bin on the way out.
I expect to go into our courtyard but she turns me right and we head towards another corridor.
‘Where’re we going?’
‘I don’t know. Anywhere, I guess. Do you care?’
‘I haven’t been down here.’
She keeps pushing.
‘You telling me you’ve been in this dump for months and haven’t been as far as the other side?’
‘Why would I? What’s to see? More decrepit old people? More geriatrics wiping their noses on the curtains? More misery?’
We pass a room that has a wheelie bed in it, standing empty.
‘Hang on,’ I say, ‘that wouldn’t be Craig’s room, would it? Go back.’
We stop outside the door and then I push inside. A long form under a blanket lies on the bed in semi-darkness. The room is tiny and smells rank, like wet socks. There’s no window.
‘Christ,’ I say, almost to myself. ‘What a bloody hellhole.’
I back out and we go down to the end of the passage.
‘Hold the door, Jack,’ Pheona says. I think it’s the first time she has called me Jack. She takes me out onto the concrete. We are on the other side of the building and in sunshine! And ahead of me there’s a high cyclone fence running the length of the concentration camp. On the other side of it there’s a vacant block overgrown with real grass.
‘Greenery,’ I say, realising it’s been quite a while since I saw anything alive other than Collier’s gardenia and my little Venus Flytrap.
‘Amazing what you find if you go a bit further,’ Pheona says. She lights a smoke but doesn’t offer me one. She stands to one side, her arms folded.
‘I go as far as I need,’ I tell her. ‘And can.’
She looks at her cigarette.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ she says.
‘What’s wrong? Everything, Pheona, I …’
‘Will you stop with the ‘Pheona’? It’s Phe, Jack, I hate Pheona.’
‘I had my gall bladder out in January, I got rashes half way up my shins and I got more metal in my legs than the Sydney Harbour Bridge.’
‘Pop reckons you don’t need the chair.’
‘Does he, now? And how would Pop know?’
‘Do you, Jack? Do you need the chair?’
‘Would I be sitting here looking decrepit in front of a young lady if I didn’t?’
‘Young lady - you trying to flatter me, Mr Smythe?’
‘That’ll be the day.’
‘You said you ran away once.’
‘Twice. With Kitty.’
‘Who’s Kitty?’
‘My sister. One day we just packed our bags and took off. I was sixteen then - same age as you.’
The girl gave me a quick look. I think she was trying to imagine me at her age.
‘I never meant to hurt the old lady,’ she said.
‘Course not. Let me tell you from my many years of experience, most of what happens is not planned. We like to think we’re in control but we’re not, not for a minute.’
‘Whatever. I think I just fucked up.’
‘And society is never going to let you forget it.’
She looks towards the empty paddock and says nothing. I realise I’m not helping.
‘Though you have to put it behind you Pheona … Phe. You turn the page and start a new chapter.’
She looks through the cyclone fence.
‘See that block?’ she says. ‘Belongs to the nursing home. Probably been like that for years.’
‘Probably,’ I say. ‘The way nothing gets done around here it’ll breed king cobras before they chop that grass.’
‘Not what I’m talking about, Jack. I mean, why don’t you arrange to chuck your brass balls in there? Organise a few of the others.’
I nearly fall out of my chair. What a joke! Imagine trying to arrange a serious game of petanque with a bunch of geriatrics, let alone get permission from the Huns to let us through the fence. And on grass? You need a stretch of good gravel.
‘I guess Jim must have told you about him and me playing up the passageway?’
‘Pop said he had a good time.’
‘What? It was pathetic! We couldn’t even retrieve the bloody balls!’ She blows some smoke and drops the butt on the concrete.
‘I asked my brother,’ she says. ‘He said you can buy a little string with a magnet thingy on the end.’
‘Good!’ I say. ‘We can lift the balls! Let the games begin!’
All of a sudden Pheona picks up her butt and puts it in a rubbish bin. I watch her carefully but she won’t look at me. Then she turns me around and we go back inside. She points out some of the old dears on that side of the establishment and shows me where they play Bingo.
‘Strangest thing you ever saw, Jack,’ she says. ‘All sitting around with their pens, trying to remember what a “legs eleven” looks like. “Say bingo” the nurse tells them and they all yell “Bingo”. All winners, no losers.’
I am very pleased to see she is starting to mellow a bit. I think the whole nursing home punishment is good for her and is starting to give her a bit of common sense. As for me, of course she is quite wrong. I’m in the wheelchair because that’s how life has panned out. Who would have believed I’d be stuck in here while my 83-year-old mother is still living at home? What Pheona fails to see is that I know my lot and I’m taking it like a man.
Bingo is one of the few games in the world where chance is the only factor. Random numbers fall and no amount of intelligence can alter the result. The true state of things - like the universe.
Kitty took off sixteen years ago - 1986 it was. Sixteen years. When you say it like that it sounds like a long time, but at my age it is very little, just a small fraction of adult life. It scares me now to think that a chunk of time like that can pass and hardly be noticed. And it scares me to think that the same amount of time might be all I have left on earth, if I’m lucky. It makes it all the more urgent that I should get this story down.
If I could choose a year to remove from history like ripping a page out of a book, it would be 1986. It was a horrible year if you think about it. First came the terrible disaster of the Challenger space shuttle. Naturally I stayed home that day to watch the take-off on TV. That magnificent craft left the launch pad and then exploded in mid-air over Florida, right in front of the families who came to wish the astronauts good luck. All the fanfare, all the preparation, the proud parents, wives, children - and then seven people reduced to powder in the atmosphere. I remember seeing the horror on the people’s faces, the groans of agony and disbelief.
Then in Sydney a week or two later Anita Coby was raped and murdered by five men. That horrible event came to mind later in the same year when Kitty said she was going, travelling alone across the country.
Next came the bombing of the Russell Street Police Station. I think a lot of people were injured and I know at least one female constable was killed. A revenge attack by ex-cons, it was said. Today it would be called terrorism and the whole country would go on alert.
Then came Chernobyl, a place now recognised for staging the worst nuclear accident in history. There must have been thousands killed by radiation with no telling what the future effects might be. Leukaemia, babies deformed, environments ruined. I think that whole event warned of a dire future, marvellous how we can wipe it from memory.
But as if that wasn’t enough, Kitt
y left, leaving me sitting in a flat that I began to despise immediately.
I did not hear from her for nearly two months. And then one night I was sitting by the TV when the phone rang.
‘Hi, Jacky Boy, it’s me!’
‘Kitty! Where are you?’
‘You won’t believe it but I’m in Toowoomba.’
‘Toowoomba.’ I said it flatly, trying to recall exactly where it was.
‘Yeah. And guess what? I’ve been working in an ice-cream factory.’
‘An ice-cream … what for?’
‘Get money, silly. But I’ve already quit. Heading off again on Saturday. How are you?’
‘I’m alright. What about you?’
‘Having a great time - you meet so many people on the road.’
‘Yeah, but what then Kitty? Then you just move on and they’re in the past. Are you thinking of coming back at all?’
‘Not for a while, Jack. Not for a long while, maybe. You should come up and visit me.’
‘You’d be gone before I got there. Keeping up with you is like chasing a shadow.’
‘Oh come on Jack, it’s not like that. I could meet you.’
‘I’ll see you next when you show up here,’ I said. I realise now that the comment might have sounded more challenging than I’d intended. The phone was silent a long moment.
‘Are you working, Jack?’
‘Got a job with a painting contractor in Richmond. Easy hours, I just work when he’s got a big job on. Suits me.’
‘Are you looking after yourself, Jack?’
I had to give that some thought.
‘What if I wasn’t?’ I said. ‘Would you come rushing back?’ Again there was a long silence and I felt badly.
‘I better go, Jack.’
‘Yeah, you better go, Kitty.’
‘I’ll phone you again from Townsville.’
‘OK. That’d be good. Stay safe.’
As soon as I put down the phone I knew I’d been an idiot. Why couldn’t I be more congenial? Why couldn’t I face the fact that Kitty had grown into a woman who was going in a different direction. She was not like me, she had needs of her own and she did not see a future hanging around with her sedentary brother. I asked her once about her lovers and about long-term relationships. ‘A woman’s life doesn’t necessarily revolve around a man, Jack,’ she said. I did not see it at the time but no doubt that ‘man’ included me. And it also included her father, the one I think she was really leaving behind.
It could not have been more than a week after Kitty’s call that I had another call, another female voice.
‘Are you Jack Smythe?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you the brother of Kitty Elizabeth Smythe?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
She said who she was and where she was from. And then she said, ‘I’m sorry to tell you, Mr Smythe, but your sister has had a collision with a semitrailer. It is my duty to inform you sir that she is not expected to live.’
I held the phone and tried to focus. I felt disoriented as if in a dream. Of course none of it could be true.
‘Who am I talking to?’ I said.
The woman repeated her name and rank, a senior officer from some police station.
‘Kitty’s … Kitty’s had an accident?’
‘I’m sorry, sir. It was a very bad accident and I’ve been asked to convey that she is not expected to live.’
Not expected to live? I could find no reality in the words. She had not been ‘injured’, she was not ‘in a critical condition’, she was not ‘dead’.
Not expected to live. Either the accident was serious and she was undergoing treatment or it was fatal, surely. I dropped the phone and vomited on the kitchen floor. I slipped in it and caught my chin on the towel rail. I vomited again. My guts knotted as though I’d been poisoned - from that day on I have always had trouble with my stomach. I was on my hands and knees on the vinyl. I thumped it hard. No! No! No! Please! Anything but that! I remember bellowing, the sound echoing in the empty flat that had offered nothing since Kitty left. I curled up on the floor like a child and bawled. Then I caught sight of the phone a few feet away. I reached for it, ‘Hello?’ I sobbed. The woman was still there, a good five minutes after we’d first spoken. She asked me if I was going to be alright. She said Kitty was taken to the hospital in Townsville. Immediately I felt heartened. I tried to sit up, to compose myself. Naturally I assumed that a team of surgeons might operate, that there was still hope.
There was none. The next day I learned of the horrible injuries, that they had kept her breathing on a machine; that she was an organ donor and they wanted her heart pumping so that her organs would be in good order. They turned off the respirator and took her parts.
A week later I was sitting in a little funeral chapel, Aunty Deb beside me, my 68-year-old mother slumped in the next booth. She was all alone and I observed her laboured breath. She squinted at the hymn selection. It was all so appalling: the awful organ-music piping senselessly around that cheerless, antique interior; some stupid saint in stained glass with the sun shining through his chest making it even more grotesque. It was my fault; I should never have allowed my mother to arrange things. I should have organised a different kind of funeral.
The chaplain suggested I give the eulogy. I should have thought of it myself - who else? When the time came I stood at the front and produced a piece of crumpled paper with my writing on it. I saw the words: Thank you for coming; Kitty was my sister; Kitty was a wonderful person … It all seemed so pointless.
‘Kitty was … Kitty was … my life,’ I said stupidly. No-one moved. What could possibly be said to change the way things were? I looked over the heads and put the speech back in my pocket. I caught sight of Lisa’s boys, just tiny little kids then. They seemed to be gazing up at me, waiting for something to happen. I saw Matthew Banes and Christopher and Carlos. I suddenly remembered something.
‘Kitty once picked up a Chinaman’s shoe,’ I said at last - I had trouble catching my breath. ‘We … we saw an old Chinese man crossing the road. And he lost his slipper.’ Matthew Banes dropped his head and for a second I saw him tanned and in togs at our kitchen sink.
‘I was on the back of Kitty’s bike … and suddenly she stopped right in the middle of the traffic …’ I looked at Debbie, her reddened face; I could hardly recognise her.
‘Kitty picked up the slipper and took the slipper over to the man … she put it … she put it on his …’ I could not go on.
‘Kitty was … my life,’ I said again, and sat down.
It was no eulogy. Deb passed me a tissue and when I cleared my eyes I saw the coffin set high on the trolley just metres away. I could not accept that my sister and companion of nearly half a century was there inside it: how could that buffed wooden box contain the beautiful young woman I knew who would squat on the toilet while I brushed my teeth, yanking a clod of tissue off the roll. How could my Kitty have broken herself to pieces on a night road coming down a mountain on her motorbike?
And I see her still: leaning forward in the saddle, her strong grip on the handlebars, the wind whipping her leathers, her mouth set with the sheer joy of speeding on and leaving the world behind; a magic white sleigh to freedom.
And I see that fifteen-year-old pulling the trapdoor out of the grass at the Daco - she would not give in; there had to be a way into that building. And dragging old Milo. I can do it, Jack, she said, don’t worry. Then I see her on the bed in the brothel, buying herself out of debt. Another person would turn their back on that obliga-tion. And I see her jangling her keys in the kitchen the day she left, the day I didn’t have the guts to get up and put my arms around her, the day I didn’t have the sense to kiss her and wish her the best for a good trip and a happy future.
After the funeral I hardly ever went out. I applied for the invalid pension and got it without a query. I pulled down the blinds and listened to talkback radio, ate cereal out of the box and watched TV. I could not wat
ch any of the movies as inevitably I would see some scene or hear some comment that would bring Kitty flooding back. Even flicking the set on would remind me of her, or a mere creak in the furniture. Some nights I hated myself. I hated myself for arguing. I hated myself for not telling her that I loved her when she called. Perhaps if I had, she might have ridden out of Toowoomba a little less urgently. To this day I feel I might have saved her, I might have changed things. Stay safe, I said on the phone that day. They were the last words I ever spoke to her.
9
Perhaps I would have gone on living like that forever, except that one morning something happened, strange and unearthly. I was lying on my back on the lounge floor, my eyes open, staring at some point the other side of the ceiling. I was wearing an old dressing gown that Kitty and I shared - I had never washed it. I too wasn’t exactly clean, but what did it matter? I cannot say how long I lay there, perhaps minutes, perhaps hours. At one point I remember vague external sounds, light, warmth, my own body. Then something shifted and the space around me began to warp and reorder in some eerie, un-nerving way - as though the very idea of consciousness was an illusion.
Sometimes if you stare long and hard at a single point, space itself begins to shift. It was like that only many times magnified. Chris would have said I had a ‘kundalini awakening’ or some such thing but of course back then he wouldn’t have known anything about it.
Suddenly everything I had ever known crowded into a single moment - the past and the present seemed to meld and become one and the same thing. Crazy? I felt as though time had stopped - no, not stopped; had lost meaning; had dissolved in the atmosphere.
I can tell you it spooked me. It wasn’t as if I was dreaming or hallucinating. If I was, I’d have felt better, but this experience disoriented me - it seemed as if I was no longer separate from everything else. I believe it was the concept of ‘time’ that had become dislodged. For a short while it just didn’t seem to have any reality at all.
Of course, Einstein himself found problems with time, had recognised how slippery it is and had come up with the idea of ‘spacetime’ to deflect the problems. But I began to doubt whether time could ‘exist’ at all - beyond being a construct of our own making. I realised that no-one has ever seen time. We are aware of change - everything is always changing - and perhaps we invented minutes, hours, years, to understand it, to measure and monitor the shifts. In that respect perhaps time is like language; using it distinguishes us from other living things - we could hardly be civilised without it - but just like language, perhaps time too is no more than an idea thought up in ancient times by some big nob in the brains department.
Smythe's Theory of Everything Page 19