by Duff, Alan
All this he knew from Frederick.
When Danny saw these girls attack drunken citizens who’d wandered like prey into their territory, it seemed little different to a wildlife documentary on television. Even though he abhorred all violence, he could see they had a kind of innocence too. They were just trying to survive, like the drunks and like Frederick.
In this unpredictable other world that he partly shared, he had to convey to these youths that, though he wasn’t homeless, he was still friends with a known and kind of respected homeless adult, and wasn’t a threat to anyone.
One day such a group hassled Danny, demanding to know ‘why a rich, pretty boy is hooked up with a log’. Their word for anyone homeless, and often drunk and unconscious. ‘He fucking you, rich boy?’
The accusation was beyond Danny. He’d only recently discovered masturbation and, though it was pleasurable it was also disturbing, the frenzied excitement, in retrospect, quite ridiculous, and undignified.
That’s when Frederick turned up. When the youths called him a sex pervert and threatened both him and Danny, Frederick pulled the knife from his trolley. ‘I’m not even fucking my hand, you knuckleheads,’ he told them. ‘You touch my friend and I’ll cut you to pieces.’
So Frederick had the warrior in him, not as much as Johno but the gesture was appreciated. Danny knew he needed protection if things turned physical.
If Frederick did virtually all the talking, he rarely spoke about himself, only about how he saw the world and what he’d studied in better days and still remembered.
More than a friend, he was a beacon of learning, humble in the face of wider knowledge, above self, ‘shed of vanity’, an enlightened man with no ego, aware that a single human existence was but a ‘pulse beat, but for one thing: the human brain’.
He’d told Danny, ‘Out of this onslaught of impressions a human can make sense and find cohesion. He discovers mathematical truths in the chaos of the universe. Or, like you, he makes art where others see nothing but what is immediately before their unseeing eyes. Perhaps this human brain will one day find a reason why we live, what is worth living for that can’t be taken away, lost, destroyed in an instant. There has to be a point.’
Words Danny was too immature to grasp and yet in a way he did. He thought they might have something to do with love, since the notion formed in his mind like a beautiful loop.
For the fourth Sunday in a row Frederick wasn’t at his usual spot in Hyde Park, Danny looked in all the parks, walked the inner city, but no sign of the distinctive coat, the supermarket trolley, Frederick’s tall figure.
But no reason for alarm. It had happened before; no doubt a dark period for Frederick, just extended.
Danny surprised his father by turning up at the beer garden for a late barbecue lunch; Mel was with him. He liked her: she had an open, honest face, like his father and maybe more so. Yet seeing them together also blurred his image of what he’d always assumed was their exclusive father–son relationship. Unreasonable jealousy poured into some internal breach.
The thought of his father having sex with this woman conjured up an act that was ugly, ungainly and messy, and to Danny’s way of thinking, confusing and disturbing, as his own self-discovery had been. The sex act seemed graceless, animal-like, which was why everyone did it in private. He thought he might stay separate from that aspect of being human.
‘Ross had boat engine problems,’ Mel said. ‘Least it’s made your father’s mind up to buy a boat so we have a back-up.’
‘It was always loud.’ Danny remembered the jarring throbbing but had no diagnosis, just a mental picture of gears and pistons meshing and destroying one another.
‘Have you had a productive day?’ Mel asked. Such a polite, well-meaning person, yet she kind of talked down to him, as if to someone either deaf or, more likely, with a mental problem.
He felt like telling her he hadn’t caught Frederick’s illness, that it wasn’t contagious. But aware his jealousy was making his thoughts angry.
Chapter twenty-six
He’d answered the door buzzer to Frederick asking him to come down; didn’t tell his father or Mavis — none of their business. Danny was relieved his friend had turned up, yet even for someone in a permanently dishevelled state, the Frederick standing in the street looking more than the outcast: this was a completely defeated man.
Danny wasn’t sure what to say and if he should shake hands, even hug him. But that ripe smell was always a put-off and Frederick wasn’t demonstrative like Johno. Just a hand on Danny’s forearm, a pat on the shoulder.
‘You’ve been gone a while. You okay?’
‘No, son. I’m not.’ Calling him that in front of Danny’s father might not go down well. Even coming here could possibly anger Johno. So Danny wanted to move them away, in case, but Frederick wasn’t going anywhere.
‘Got darker,’ he said, out of a mouth that barely opened to speak.
‘I thought you took pills for …’ A Hopkins line learned from Frederick came then: I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day. What hours, o what black hours we have spent …
‘Got darker … more and more weight inside my head. Like it’s trying to shove my pride down before … I don’t know …’
His normally intense stare gone, his eyelids fluttered and he rocked from side to side as though trying to come up for air. His hands formed into weak fists, then opened. The coat seemed much too large now, nearly enveloped him. His supermarket trolley had the same black-plastic-protected pile inside its wire cage. How many thousands of kilometres of city and suburban pavement had it covered, how many park lawns and pathways? At the end of each day, before he got too drunk, he always attached a length of padlocked chain from the trolley to his left ankle.
After a while Frederick said, ‘Before they finish me, the dirty bastards.’ As if there was some conspiracy against him. But Danny knew how his friend saw his problem, that it wasn’t a singular force out to take him down.
Danny said, ‘But you’re not ready to be finished — are you?’ Wanting to hear his friend say no. If Frederick was weak, then so was he.
‘It’s bigger than me,’ Frederick said. ‘It is me … what I am, what I was born …’ Another long pause, from this man who’d told Danny never to try to fill a silence. It has its own voice if you’ll give it your ear.
‘Like you, eh, little flourishing artist …’ The barest twitch of the mouth to say he had tried to smile. ‘Born with a pencil, then a paintbrush in your hand.’
‘What about what you were born with? Your knowledge. Your mind—’ Emotion checked him, and anyway Danny couldn’t express in words what Frederick had done for him. He only knew that after their encounters he’d go home and his painting would flow.
‘I guess something of a mind — if you can call it that, fatally flawed though it is.’ His eyes fell to the pavement once again. The worn twine-held shoes shuffled and scraped against the concrete. Fatally?
‘If you get medication,’ Danny said. ‘You said it works. I know not forever, but it lasts a period.’
‘If I take it every day, and I don’t.’
‘Why?’ Danny almost angry at this apparently wilful self-neglect. ‘What if I said you have to take your medication or I won’t be your friend anymore?’ Damn it, try anything. And when a smile ghosted across the bearded face, Danny thought he might have struck a chord.
Except Frederick shook his head. ‘Not how it works, Danny boy.’ Like someone calling up from the depths. ‘This one’s had hold of me since — I don’t know since when —’
‘Five weeks. I searched for you all over town, on the ferries across the harbour to all the parks. I even hung around at Central Station in case you were free-riding.’ He found a smile. ‘Good to see you, Frederick.’
‘You too, kid.’ Yet the eyes were blank, distant. His mouth, even partly obscured by the wild facial hair, turned — no, pulled — down, the brow with deeper creases and his stench so rank that Danny almost st
arted retching.
‘Can you look after my trolley while I’m gone?’
‘Sure. Gone where?’ Danny easily panicked.
‘Taking myself to a psych unit.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The psychiatric unit of a hospital.’
‘Where they’ll fix you?’
‘Treat me,’ said Frederick. ‘What I have can’t be fixed, only given a temporary reprieve.’
Danny’s father’s words coming back, predicting Frederick would die out in the open in some park, forgotten, ignored, as if he’d never existed. He said, ‘But if you add the temporaries together, don’t they come to the same thing? A longer period of …’ Did he say life? Sanity? Wellness?
‘Of ranting to an unheeding world,’ Frederick said, without his usual wry smile. ‘Of fighting the darkness, always the darkness …’ The pause went on; Danny told himself not to try filling it. Let it speak.
Eventually he said, ‘You told me one day someone will find a reason for us to live. Discover the point of life.’
‘I did,’ said Frederick. ‘But I didn’t mean I might be the one who discovered this. No … No, not me. Much too far to come.’
Danny didn’t know what to say next.
‘Promise you’ll look after my trolley.’
‘I promise. But if my father says no to using his spare car park I’ll have to—’ Danny had an idea. ‘Then I’ll put it in storage. I’ve seen a place on our walks that will store anything of any size for a small rent. I could bring you the key.’
‘See what he says. He’s not a bad person, your father.’ Frederick gave out a short chuckle. ‘But he didn’t like my being in your house that time.’
‘But normally he’s very kind to everyone.’
‘Yes.’ Frederick’s eyes came up. ‘I never doubted that. But it wouldn’t surprise if he’s not suffering, just a touch, from what I’ve got. Depression is quite common.’
‘You told me.’ Danny’s mind quickly found a comfortable slot that fitted too perfectly his father’s quiet moods, guarding his private side, even with his own son. ‘And my dad does get pretty serious, sometimes.’
‘Just he’s put his energies into his business, to raising his son. They say one of the secrets is taking yourself out of the equation.’ Frederick gave a long sigh. ‘I tried … Just not hard enough, I guess.’
‘You’ll be okay in no time.’ One of Mavis’s cover-all phrases. ‘Dad buried in his work, always making sure I’m okay. Now he has love. He’s got a girlfriend at last.’ They have sex.
Frederick nodded, looked over Danny’s shoulder. ‘And he’ll never end up living on the streets, unless the black dog catches up with him.’
‘But he says you never know how life will turn out. So never get smug.’ Danny tried to remember all his father’s words on the subject. ‘But I was never sure what he meant.’
‘I’m sure. He’s saying everyone can come down. He’s …’ Frederick’s hand went out as if he was about to start one of his typical rants. But he only shook his head; the words had dried up.
‘Where will I find you? I’ll come and visit.’ There was alarm in Danny’s voice.
But no sound came from those mutely moving lips, the facial hair claiming his voice like jungle growth.
‘I’d come often. But I need to know where you’ll be because Dad’s getting another apartment close to his new bar.’
‘I followed you to his bar,’ Frederick said. ‘A mate looked after my trolley. I didn’t try to go inside. They would’ve stopped me anyway. Just smiled at seeing your name in neon. Danny’s Drawings. Some name. Some person in the flesh. How did I get a friend like you?’
‘You mean, how did I? And I hate it, the attention, people pointing at me like I’m some freak. I’ll get another key cut.’
‘For what?’
‘Storage for your trolley.’
‘Oh, that’s right.’
‘Where will I find you?’ Danny spoke again to silence. It was as if his friend had already begun his departure — his farewell.
‘Beach Haven Psychiatric Unit at Fairfield Hospital out in Marrickville.’ A chuckle rose up but became a choking instead. He coughed to clear his throat and said, ‘Beach Haven — pah. No beach within twenty kilometres. Someone thought that name might help cheer us up.’ The laugh escaped this time, but was gone as quickly as it came.
‘I have to go now, kid. Feels like big black crows are circling above ready to scoop me up. Here, shake my hand. And make it firm.’
Finding a grin, Danny said, ‘What Dad says. “Grip it, son. It’s not a bloody butterfly.”’ And did his best at imitating a so-called proper handshake. ‘Not fair, is it?’
‘Some things aren’t. You’ll take good care of my worldly belongings, won’t you?’
Yes, Danny could only nod, because suddenly he wanted to cry.
Hands gripping the trolley handle, aware they were sticky with accumulated grime, he watched the figure in its distinctive grey overcoat walk more slowly than usual down a street he didn’t belong in, and yet all streets — and none — were his home. Then Frederick turned and came back, removing his coat as he walked. ‘Forgot this,’ he said. ‘My identity, I guess.’ He folded it lengthways and placed it gently over the plastic hump protruding from the trolley.
He put out his hand again. ‘Be seeing you, kid.’
They were in his father’s accountant’s office and Mr Stringer was telling Danny that his grandfather’s inheritance now amounted to $728,000 and more numbers about what this invested sum earned annually. Danny was more interested that one of his paintings was the sole artwork on display here; he knew by the style it was from about a year or so ago. His father had asked if he could give his accountant a work of Danny’s choosing, and he’d asked why and his father said ‘as a gesture for looking after your money’. The painting had been inspired by a scuba-diving trip. He didn’t much like it now.
‘But it isn’t my money,’ Danny had said.
‘Nor is it your money being spent on your art career and keeping you alive. But who fucking cares?’ Johno was a little cross. ‘It’s a family thing. Your Gramps’s money made me, I paid him back, and he left it all to you. Why? To support your future career as an artist, same as I’m doing. Be your turn when I’m old and maybe broke and you’re a rich, international artist. The Chinese aren’t the only ones who do this.’
‘The Chinese?’
‘I have more and more of them as customers. I’m quite fascinated by how they think. They look after each other because they know no one else will. I know you don’t care about money and in a way nor do I. The only spending I want to do is on a nicer place to live and a good boat to take me — us again one day, I hope — out on overnight dive trips. But I do respect money and …’ His father went on a bit, but to unhearing ears.
They left with Brett Stringer’s assurance that his firm monitored all its clients’ investments ‘rigorously and thoroughly’. Keeping safe a sum of money that didn’t remotely feel like Danny’s own or of his deserving.
Though he did see one possibility as they walked the short distance to Danny’s Drawings and his father pointed out the apartment complex where he was negotiating to buy a unit.
‘What if I used some of Gramps’s money to buy Frederick his own place?’
His father didn’t react that strongly, just said, ‘I don’t think so, son. Kind thought though it is, he’d be back out on the streets in no time. Just how these people are, sad as it makes you.’ His father’s big hand, though well meant, felt like a weight on his shoulders.
‘He’s been getting treatment in a psych unit.’ Danny had made many visits to Fairfield Hospital, taking a train then a bus. ‘Five months now. They’ve cleaned him up — no big beard, his hair’s cut and it shines. If he could come out to his own place I think he’d stay well. You see, the medication—’
‘Sorry,’ his father cut in, ‘but I don’t think your grandfather would be very happy seeing
his money spent on buying a place for a homeless person with a mental problem. Nor would I.’
‘All right. How about renting an apartment for him?’
They stopped, Johno’s arm still around his son. ‘I’ve told you this countless times: your destinies are far apart. I reckon it’s time you bit—It’s time you terminated this friendship before it starts harming you.’
‘Harm? How, Dad? I don’t understand. You know I’ve had a lot from our friendship. You think I don’t know how odd it looks? I see how even the drunks and other homeless people look at me weirdly,’ said Danny. He took a deep breath; he must keep the emotion under control in front of his father.
‘It’s what I do, Dad. I observe.’ And then the floodgates started to creak open. ‘Did you ever notice the paintings I did of these two big rough guys kicking a young guy on the ground? No. Maybe I should have shown it to you and explained. I think they use the gangs of younger people to sell drugs. I noticed this, Dad. Who do you think helped open my eyes? Please say it, Dad.’
‘Thank you, Frederick.’ A father looking his son square in the eye so he would know he was sincere. ‘As one of your two trustees, I’ll ask Brett Stringer to write up a lease for a city apartment.’
‘Can he be paid, like, a weekly wage?’ Danny moved in quickly. ‘So he doesn’t feel tempted to go back to old habits.’
‘The government pays him a sickness benefit — you told me.’
‘It would be a top-up. Isn’t that what you call it? So he can buy …’ his eyes met this father’s knowing gaze, ‘the little extra things.’
‘Like cheap vodka?’ said Johno. ‘Or would he move to a better brand?’
‘I have sneaked him small bottles,’ Danny replied, slightly embarrassed. ‘It’s his only indulgence, along with smoking. And they don’t allow smoking indoors either. Patients have to smoke out in a garden, which could do with your landscape architect — his name’s Marcus, right?’