by Duff, Alan
‘At me?’ Danny smiled confidently. ‘Go on then. I dare you.’
‘I do and you’ll kick me out like some heartless landlord?’ Frederick seemed to lift to the lighter moment.
‘Depends,’ said Danny, ‘on how angry you get.’
‘You’d lose that one. I could never get angry at you, son. Never. But I still want to know why you’re here.’
‘Felt uncomfortable. All the fuss and people, as my dad said, wanting a piece of me. I only paint things.’
‘Society not only appreciates artists, it cherishes them. And if it’s near a sell-out and each one for thousands, you’d better get used to the fuss and attention because it’s going to be part of your everyday life.’ Now that he was more or less clean-shaven, given he’d not shaved for a few days, even his slightest grin could be seen. His hair, even if it hadn’t seen a comb or brush for a while, was in better order being cut short to a grey-flecked stubble. In clean clothes, too, he looked a different man entirely, and yet Danny knew instantly this was the same man. And clearly his medication wasn’t working.
‘The women were the worst. Telling me I had it all. You know, the art and good looks — as if I care about my looks.’
‘I care,’ Frederick said. ‘Maybe not the handsome part so much as the goodness I see coming out.’ Another flicker of a smile. ‘It makes you glow.’
‘If that’s true then I can’t see it.’ Danny was a little embarrassed.
‘Nor should you,’ Frederick said. ‘Or it invites vanity, much the worst version of anyone.’ Took a gulp from his glass of vodka, which he drank straight.
‘I still like to take care of myself,’ Danny said without thinking. His friend flinched ever so slightly.
‘A certain amount is both necessary and good for you.’ Frederick stared at Danny, who couldn’t hold his gaze, and looked away, only to see a heap of clothes he’d bought with a cleaned-up Frederick fresh out of hospital, choosing for him as he wasn’t much interested, and happy to be able to pay. ‘When you can find the will to.’
‘If you don’t feel like it, I could ask Mavis to come in and tidy up,’ Danny said. ‘I’d help her.’
‘While the cause of all this mess stands here watching with a vodka glass in hand? You think I don’t see it?’
‘No,’ said Danny. ‘You just don’t care because at the moment I don’t think you can.’
‘That a statement or a question?’
Danny just lifted his shoulders.
‘How about won’t?’ But Danny wasn’t buying that. ‘All right — can’t. I can’t get myself to clean up my own mess. I see it but not enough to care. That make you want to kick me out?’
‘The first time you said that I thought it was a joke. Now …?’
‘Because I’m a hopeless case and you’re wasting your time and money. Putting me up in this apartment, even the view is soon lost to my vodka master.’
‘Still better than sleeping outdoors.’
‘You reckon? Sometimes I wish you’d tell me to get out.’
‘You said you’d never get angry at me,’ Danny said. ‘And I’d never tell you to leave. Never.’
Visibly trying to struggle up from his inner darkness, Frederick said, ‘I’ll get round to cleaning up. Yeah. One of these days, eh?’ A helpless expression, though, as he added, ‘When there’s a break in the clouds.’
‘There will be. And it’s better you stay here till there is.’
Frederick wanted to know every detail of Danny’s début exhibition. ‘Your old man must’ve been real proud.’
‘I overheard someone say he was bursting at the seams with pride. He thinks I’m better than I am.’
‘Why would you say that?’ Frederick quite shocked. ‘The three works you put on the walls here I look at till the vodka steals my eyes.’
‘Because I’ve seen other artists’ work. But I’m not bothered if someone is better than me. I’ll still paint.’
‘Show me that person and I’ll crown him king,’ Frederick growled. ‘But not bloody likely, mate.’
His father had asked when Frederick’s supermarket trolley could be either dumped or offered back to the owner because the neighbours were making louder noises about the ‘unsightly object’ in his car park. ‘But the main complainant happens to be a fan of your art. I told her you were looking after it for a very sick homeless friend and just waiting for him to get well again. That shut her up.’
The same middle-aged woman, a surgeon’s wife, Alexia someone, had been all over him at tonight’s gallery exhibition. She’d proudly told him she’d bought a couple of his paintings, then winked and whispered, ‘I hear you have a kind heart for the less fortunate. That speaks well of you, as if you’re not covered in praise enough already.’ So the cart was okay for a while. Maybe he could dump it, but not the big coat for which he had a strange affection.
Danny realised he hadn’t heard a word recited in the eight months Frederick had lived here. ‘Have you lost interest in poetry?’ he asked.
As soon as he spoke Frederick’s eyes suddenly became bright. ‘This is from Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow.”’ Danny knew the routine: Frederick readying himself physically for one of his eloquent, quoted outbursts.
Tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time.
And all our yesterdays …
That familiar pause, the silence to which a young man listened.
Have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.
And then is heard no more. It is a tale …
‘Danny boy …’ speaking his name in a surprise, as if the more to include him, or grab his complete attention.
‘“It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury” — are you hearing the Bard, lad?’ Hearing him indeed, understanding something, if not necessarily the words.
‘“Signifying nothing.’” The light in his eyes had gone out, as he said in a low voice, ‘Nothing, said the Bard. As does this depressed wretch agree. The king’s life in this tale came down to nothing. Seems Frederick’s life means even less.’
‘Come on now,’ Danny said. But no further words came, not when he stared into eyes reflecting no light.
The next time he found him in the Botanic Gardens, sitting near a rare Wollemi pine, which the previous Frederick had told his young friend came from the dinosaur age: ‘To think this same species has lived for a couple hundred million years. And found in only a few tiny sites in Australia. And here a mere human being, in a fragile state, no more than fifty years living, back in his old habitat and grown rapidly into his former self. All around him flying foxes roosted in the trees, hung like lanterns during the daytime, at night destroyed their own living environment by eating out the foliage.’
Danny remembered his friend talking of stringy barks and scribbly gums, of eucalypts and kurrajongs, wattles, bottlebrushes, dragon’s blood trees, banksias, cypress pines, Moreton Bay figs. Of sulphur-crested cockatoos, superb fairy-wrens, rufous fantails, paradise shelducks … ‘Here in a bustling city is a little paradise.’
This man who didn’t fit naming trees and plants and birds and insects, microscopic creatures invisible to the eye, in between swallows of pungent, cheap vodka. In the flower beds — begonias, succulents — and delighting in introducing Mrs Macquarie’s Bushland Walk, as though the wife of Sydney’s founding father was going to turn up any moment.
‘It’s only because I missed it, kid.’ He looked at Danny like a sad, soliciting dog wanting both food and love.
‘I understand,’ Danny said. But in a way he didn’t — choosing to rough it when you had a rent-free, everything-paid apartment in Chinatown, only twenty minutes’ walk away. But another world.
‘I have some Danny’s Dra
wings Sunday barbecue if you want?’ said Danny. ‘We can eat it at your flat … maybe?’
‘Not hungry, kid.’
‘I can see that. You’ve lost weight, Frederick. A lot.’
‘That’s being without my coat. You still have it?’
‘Yes. And the trolley.’ Danny was afraid to ask the question, but he must. ‘You want me to bring your stuff here?’
But Frederick shook his head, hair grown a lot longer and the beard back, though not yet wildly entangled. His fingernails were filthy again, and there was a raw burn-mark from a cigarette gone out in unconscious fingers.
‘The day I ask for it is the day I’m back here for good,’ he said. The head shake grew vigorous, adamant. He conjured up a smile that didn’t seem to fit, not till he said, ‘Stringy barks and scribbly gums. You remember? Of course you do. The lovely language all around us, eh, kid? Words flitting like butterflies needing to be taken in gentle hands and admired.’
Danny couldn’t speak.
‘I’m okay. I’ll even come back and eat some of that barbie, eh? A couple of ribs at least. Salad I never liked.’
‘Do you like baked spud with garlic butter?’
‘No. Spud’s too heavy for my constitution. I remember you mentioned barbecued prawns covered in garlic butter.’
‘I have some. On the house, compliments of my dad, he said to tell you.’
‘He knows you came out looking for me?’
‘He guessed. Said to give you his regards.’
‘That’s kind of him,’ Frederick got up off the grass. ‘I thought he didn’t approve of me?’ Looked at Danny as if wanting to be corrected. But Danny just shrugged.
The clothes that had been brand-new some months ago were now much the worse for wear. Without his coat he was but a shadow of the strangely prepossessing man Danny first knew.
‘If you want your coat I could get it dry-cleaned and — or I could just bring it. Must be cold at night.’
‘I didn’t always have the coat,’ Frederick said. ‘No. Leave it where it is, long as your father doesn’t mind. Call it holding the fort for a bit longer than we all thought. I took a blanket from the flat if that’s okay?’
‘Yes, of course. Take anything you want — ask for anything.’ Wanted to tell his friend just to keep his head above water till the tide goes out, as surely it must.
‘You couldn’t spot me a few bucks, could you? I have an awful thirst and I’m all spent out.’
‘Sure. Come on.’ Danny led their exit from the park. ‘We’ll buy it on the way.’
Soon he noticed — and knew Frederick had, too, from the way he tensed and moved closer to Danny — a group of about half a dozen youths eyeing them or, rather, Danny. They conferred in staged whispers, nodding as if agreeing to something.
‘How ya goin’, rich boy? Couldn’t stay away?’ said one who Danny knew as Corey, the leader of this pack.
‘Where goes Freddy, goes his homeboy,’ said Jason, Corey’s closest sidekick, whom Danny had depicted in that painting a few years ago being kicked by two thugs heavy with gold jewellery as he lay on the ground in Hyde Park, not so far from here.
‘Chickens home to roost.’ Corey was a thick-set guy of about twenty, a couple years older than Danny.
‘Ignore them, Danny,’ Frederick said. ‘Fucking spoonheads.’
‘Still got his mouth, even with the cleaner look,’ another said.
‘But he’s falling back,’ said Corey. ‘We all do.’ Staring at Danny with an oddly assessing smile, as though he was sure they’d meet again.
Something about these young men was telling Danny they actually wanted to be friends. He was sure he saw this in Corey’s eyes.
Same person who said to his back, ‘Maybe you can show us your art one day, rich boy? Reckon you like the free life.’
That stopped Frederick, who turned and said, ‘You’re not free, you lost punks. You’re prisoners of your own anger.’ He broke off in a taunting cackle and said, ‘I could cure you in a week of unconditional love, you unknowing fools. Now leave us the fuck alone.’
Chapter twenty-nine
Today he was following some compelling urge to test his limits by going out diving alone and deeper than he ever had before. He’d been angry at first when Danny had informed him that Frederick hadn’t been living in his apartment for many months, but then filled with dismay and sorrow that a person was so afflicted by depression he could willingly become homeless again.
Over the years a few of his bar patrons had disappeared for a period to get treatment for depression. A couple of them had committed suicide, a subject he was in two minds about. On the one hand a cowardly act or, the softer Johno Ryan conceded, a decision beyond the person’s control since Nature had dealt them a bad hand.
Ostensibly, he was trialling a new boat, inflatable, that he was definitely buying. It could be driven on wheels into the sea and then, at the flick of a switch, hydraulics hauled the wheels up.
The city he grew up in was no more once he’d rounded Sydney Heads and went north into virtually no wind. He had a depth gauge to guide where he’d dive. It felt strangely exhilarating being out here alone without a dive buddy, as was mandatory practice. Some might put it down to childish macho vanity spurring him. But it wasn’t that.
Just an intuitive thing needing few words, more a picture in his mind of being in an extreme situation and seeing what it would be like. Any dive is an immediate welcome to another world, met by blue light, inhabitants of the sea, the visual splendour he could never describe even to himself, and knew no diver who could or was even inclined to. The experience spoke for itself.
Descending, as his air bubbles ascended in a stream to the surface; the silence profound except for his breathing tank air, and always that marvellous sensation of flight, of weightlessness.
Not long before the twenty-metre mark came up on his depth gauge; the colour starting to bleed a little. At thirty metres, a hundred feet in old terms, the most he’d ever dived, colour had faded more, and there was an ominous semi-gloom. Everything had a grey-purple sheen, rock formations looked more like uncarved tombstones, though fish moved in and out of cracks and caves and plants.
He thought again of why he was doing this, though it didn’t stop his descent. He just wanted to know.
At forty metres the cold registered on his bare hands and face, and it was quite a bit darker. Yet he could lift his head and see the brightness above, his air bubbles like a flimsy connection between common sense and plain foolishness. Look down and it was a deep, foreboding blue-black, a tone dreams understand but not the body, or the brain behind the eyes. Thought then it was like the start of hell and adrenalin trickled into his system.
He felt, literally, the increased weight of the sea upon him, squirting air into his compensator to control his descent. With quickened breathing his expended air broke into thousands of tiny balls, all intent on rushing to the surface, though when reaching it they would dissipate and die.
But something more basic took over: the need to get his breathing under better control. He was using too much air. A man could lose his head down here and be gone in moments. Who would take care of Danny? How many storeys high is forty-six metres? Why was he doing this?
Free-divers regard this depth as a joke, he told himself. He recalled his dive instructor saying that the world record — without a tank, just a lungful of air, and no fins — is a hundred metres. Well, he had a tankful of air, if down already by a quarter. Had to relax his muscles so the breathing was less frantic. What was there to be anxious about?
But then he was just a man without much experience and none at this depth. And still he descended, even as fear began coming at him in waves and he felt part of the great weight pressing — pushing him — down every moment. He could end this right now, this reckless act become too much like a death-wish, and just head back up. No decompression stops would be necessary, not if he had no bottom time. End it, Johno.
At fifty metres h
e felt suspended between life and death. In a world reduced to: Up there. Down here. Above, where sensible humans dwell. Below, where fish live. Plain and simple.
Kept sending air puffs into his compensator so the metres crept by. Fifty-three … fifty-four …
At sixty metres he stopped. He looked up, expecting to see a faintly shining surface, but it had gone. Just a blanket of blackness at a depth impossible to gauge. Panic threatened to seize him and registered in air bubbles hurtling past his face mask. Needed to focus on something outside of himself.
Still life down here, of course. Groper live at this depth and deeper; a big black one emerged from the murk and checked him out. A few schools of fish, but there were more individuals and the smaller fish must thrive in shallower water. Shapes became sharply defined pictures of scaly life forms, then disappeared back into the gloom. He knew from his and Mel’s dive buddy Ross that sharks were the least of a diver’s worries. Yet in his mind every larger fish turned into a shark. Self-discipline was number one. Not doing stupid things like this.
He wondered how colour appeared to a fish’s eyes, pulled forth a memory of his son exclaiming after their first sea dive how brilliant the hues were, how he saw ‘party ribbons and Christmas sparkles of light’. So what kind of responsible father would be down here doing this?
Then a great fear came upon him as the cold had come some twenty metres above. Felt like prison gates had slammed shut on him but with even greater finality. This was the end. He’d messed up and of his own crazy-minded volition.
Is this how Frederick feels? Is it so dark and oppressive, with death a moment away?
The air gauge told him his breathing rate had not gone down. His wetsuit felt claustrophobically tight. The weightlessness now felt as if he couldn’t tell which was up or down. The fear felt alternately like ice in his veins or as if he were drowning in it, filling his lungs so that soon he’d not be able to breathe the precious bottled air. No jail cell ever felt like this.