Honeybee

by Craig Silvey;

  Vic pointed to his left ear, which had a purple scar and a little piece missing.

  ‘I knew why they were protesting, and they were right. But they made us feel ashamed to come home. That was the worst thing. They were yelling at the wrong blokes. A lot of us had no choice. We were just boys. I reckon Edie saw that the moment I got hit. And you know, I’d go through it all again if it meant meeting her at the end of it.’

  ‘You were in a war?’

  ‘Vietnam. Drafted in sixty-eight.’

  ‘What do you mean drafted?’

  ‘National Service.’

  Vic could see that I didn’t know what that meant either.

  ‘Used to be a birthday ballot. If you were a young man of a certain age born on a certain day, you got drafted into the military, did your training and all that, and some of those fellas were deployed.’

  ‘What do you mean a ballot?’

  ‘Like the lotto, but the prize is pretty ordinary.’

  ‘What if you didn’t want to go?’

  ‘You served your time in jail.’

  ‘Really?’

  Vic nodded.

  ‘But I wanted to go,’ he said.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Because I was young and stupid and I thought it was the right thing to do.’

  ‘So one day you were a mechanic, and then you just had to stop everything and go kill people?’

  ‘Not quite as simple as that, but that’s what it boiled down to. First few months over there were the same as home, just with more humidity and artillery fire. They had me servicing vehicles at a support base. Other pogo duties too. Worked a mop, cleaned latrines, camp maintenance. Unloading ammunition crates and drums of herbicide. Foul-smelling stuff. Burned like hell if it got on your skin.’

  ‘So did everybody over there have the same birthday?’

  Vic raised his eyebrows and smiled.

  ‘No, the ballot didn’t quite work like that, mate.’

  ‘Did you have to fight?’

  Vic nodded.

  ‘Six months in they sent me outside the wire. I joined up with an infantry battalion.’

  ‘Were you scared?’

  Vic took a deep breath and rubbed his face. He looked down at the table for a couple of minutes. I worried that I was asking too many questions. I was about to say sorry when he spoke.

  ‘I never told Edie this. Early on, we were stationed at a base camp south of a village on an NVA supply route. One day we were out on patrol, just a half-platoon of us. Hot as hell. Thick jungle. Hard to breathe. I was right at the rear.’

  Vic stopped. He tapped the table again and cleared his throat.

  ‘Next up the line was a private by the name of Reuben Martin. City boy, from Melbourne; been with us maybe a month. Real jittery, size of a jockey, had Coke-bottle glasses that fogged up with the humidity. I had one eye on his helmet, the other in the trees. At one point he stopped cold, white as a sheet. Waved me up. Said he’d lost sight of the men in front, and he’d veered us further off course trying to link back. We were lost.’

  Vic stopped talking. His hands were shaking. He swallowed hard and kept going with his story.

  ‘I took us east down a ridge to try to intersect the platoon, old Reuben treading on my ankles. I halted at the base of the ridge. I could see movement through the leaves. I crouched down and looked down the sight of my SLR. Next to me, Reuben did the same. The NVA were always well camouflaged, see, and not always in uniform. Someone came into view. I saw black hair, a face. Then I heard a burst of fire. It was Reuben. I pushed his barrel down. Waited. No return fire. So I crept forwards. He was maybe twenty, twenty-five metres away, but it felt like it took ten minutes to reach him. But it wasn’t a soldier—it was a young girl. About your age. Skinny as a rabbit, still holding on to a basket. She’d been shot in the chest, the leg and the shoulder. She was still alive. She was so scared she never made a sound. I picked her up and I told her she would be alright. I could feel the exit wound on her back, and I plugged my hand hard up against it. We had to get her back to camp for treatment. It was touch and go but we had to try. We doubled back. Made it a few hundred metres before our platoon commander appeared. They’d heard the gunshots. He had a med kit. I laid the girl down but she was already gone. Her eyes were still open and she still looked scared. All the things I’ve forgotten in my life, I wish I could forget that. But it’s like it happened yesterday.’

  ‘What did you do next?’

  ‘We buried her. Right there.’

  ‘And what happened to the man who shot her?’

  Vic shook his head slowly.

  ‘Nothing at all. Except he had to live with what he’d done for the rest of his life.’

  We both went quiet. Vic’s shoulders were hunched forwards. He blinked hard a couple of times, then he stood up.

  ‘Time for bed,’ he said.

  That night I stared at the ceiling and I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about how Vic had to stop his life and go to war. It was unfair that he didn’t have a choice. It reminded me of the Dungeon Master in Aggie’s game, the person who didn’t play but decided the rules, then everything came down to a roll of the dice.

  Vic said it was all worth it because he met Edie when he came home. It was really romantic. Then I remembered something. I got up and opened Vic’s chest of drawers. I took out the lace-fringed apricot handkerchief with the bloodstains. I knew it must be the one she had given him the day they met. Vic had kept it all this time. It felt really precious, like a piece of history, like it belonged in a museum. I held it to my face, but I couldn’t smell anything.

  I folded it up, but I didn’t want to put it back. I kept it in my hand and I lay down again. I felt sad, because Vic missed her so much. Then I felt jealous, because nobody would ever love me as much as Vic loved Edie. And I knew that I would go to war too if it meant coming home to someone.

  The next day I was looking through Edie’s wardrobe for something to wear, but there were a couple of suitcases in the way. I thought they were empty but they were really heavy. I dragged one out and opened it. Inside were stacks of notebooks with hard covers. They were Edie’s diaries.

  The oldest one went back to 1975. I opened it. I knew it was wrong to read something so private, but since I had been sleeping in her bed and wearing her clothes, I felt really close to Edie. I wanted to know more about her.

  At first the entries were pretty short. She would write a few lines about what the weather was like, people she saw that day, food she ate, movies she watched, books she was reading, songs she liked on the radio. She added more detail as the year got going. She was worried about money, because she and Vic had just built the house. They had been trying to start a family, but she couldn’t fall pregnant. Edie was jealous of her sisters and her friends, who were all having children at the same time. Some of the pages had photos slipped between them, so I could put faces to names. I saw pictures of parties and picnics, and Edie and Vic camping or painting the house.

  I finished 1975 that night. The next day I started 1976. And every day after that I read more. I liked Edie’s voice. I felt like she was speaking straight to me, the same as it was with Julia Child, except Edie was telling me her secrets and her most private thoughts. She was so tough and fearless, and she cared about so many people. She was always taking a pepper beef pie and a Swiss roll to her friend Irene who had broken her ankle, or watering the garden for her friends Judy and Pete who went to Kakadu on their honeymoon.

  She was always busy. She worked so many different jobs. She was a cleaner. She worked at a nursery. She was a sales assistant in a gift store. She was a secretary for a trucking company. She worked behind the cosmetics counter at Myer. She was an aerobics instructor. She played tennis and golf and badminton. She belonged to a sewing circle and a book club. She was always trying new things. She never complained, and even when things were going bad, she would tell herself that a fix was around the bend. She was a very hopeful person. She had a habit
of saying that she was ‘in fine fettle’. I didn’t know what it meant, but I liked to say it to myself.

  The only time she was really upset was when she wrote about trying to have a baby. She felt like she had failed as a woman. Her body was betraying her, and she was letting everybody down, especially Vic. She never told anybody how she was feeling. She carried it all on her own. One day at work she got her period and she locked herself in a storeroom and cried for an hour. It made me cry too, because I knew how helpless and frustrated she felt.

  It was heartbreaking. All she wanted was to have a son or a daughter to love. She visited doctors and had a lot of tests, but nobody could tell her what was wrong. Then a specialist did some tests on Vic. He wasn’t in the clinic when all the results came back, so Edie was on her own when she learned that he was the reason they couldn’t conceive. It wasn’t her fault after all.

  But when Edie got home she told Vic that his tests were clear. She didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth. She was the only person who ever knew. Except now I did.

  Edie was devastated that she and Vic wouldn’t have children of their own, but she didn’t give up hope. A few years later they applied to adopt, and they went through a whole process of interviews and assessments. But just when they were at the last stage, something bad happened with Vic’s business, and they were suddenly in a lot of debt. They got knocked back.

  Edie never wrote about having children again. Maybe she didn’t want to talk about it anymore because it hurt too much. But even then, she had love to spare. She started part-time work in childcare, and she volunteered at Princess Margaret Children’s Hospital one day a week.

  One afternoon in 1985, Vic brought home a stray dog that had been hanging around his workshop. It was skinny and shy and they didn’t know what breed he was. Edie loved him immediately. She called him Pirate because he had a black patch over his right eye. There was a polaroid photo of him and Edie. She had permed hair and I recognised her knit jumper as the first one I had worn. They both looked really happy.

  Edie rescued a lot of dogs from then on. At one point they had four at once. But she never adopted puppies, she only brought home older dogs, especially ones whose owners had died or couldn’t care for them anymore. She thought they deserved to have a friend until the end.

  Sometimes they got so sick and old that she had to arrange to put them down. The first time she did it was a Labrador called Sandy who had bowel problems and terrible arthritis.

  Edie carried Sandy into the vet and laid her down on the table. She asked if she could stay with her, because it was important that Sandy didn’t die alone and she didn’t want her to feel scared. Edie smiled and scratched Sandy behind the ears, which made her tail wag. Edie told her that she was a good girl, that her pain was going to stop, and she had earned a big sleep. And when Sandy’s tail stopped wagging and she stopped breathing, Edie hugged her and started crying so loudly that all the other dogs started barking and howling.

  It never got any easier for Edie. She dreaded it, but she always went in with the old dogs and held them before they went to sleep.

  I loved Edie. Not just because she was so kind and strong, but because she felt lost sometimes too. Her diaries were full of things she was unsure about, questions she was afraid to ask anybody, all of her worries and fears and doubts.

  She wished Vic would talk to her more. He never talked about the war, or his business, or anything that was troubling him. She knew that he had awful thoughts swirling around in his head. She said it was like getting blood from a stone.

  He had bad dreams sometimes. He woke up kicking his legs and shouting and covered in sweat. He wouldn’t tell her about it. He just got out of bed and got dressed and went for a long ride on the Black Shadow.

  It was strange, because Vic had told me things that he hadn’t told Edie. I knew the secrets they kept from each other.

  Edie’s diaries made me realise life was made up of lots of small moments that you could control and a few big ones that you couldn’t. For weeks at a time, Edie would write about how she wanted to learn French, or how she couldn’t get her chrysanthemums to grow, or how the price of bananas was too high, or how her friend Caroline was having an affair with the maths teacher at her son’s high school, or how she wanted to get her hair cut short. And then, without any warning, her brother fell asleep while he was driving and crashed into a tree and died.

  The same thing happened to me with Edie.

  It was the entry for 21 May 2011. Edie wrote about putting money aside to take a cruise down the Danube River. She wanted to surprise Vic with tickets. She wondered if she would leave Misty at a kennel or with friends. The next day she would see a travel agent, after her appointment with the physiotherapist, because her knee had been flaring up. Then she wrote that she was going to bed early, because she had a headache and her eyes felt tired.

  I turned the page, and there was nothing there. I kept turning them, but they were all blank.

  At first I was confused. I went back to the suitcase because there were still some journals in there, but they were all empty too. And then I realised, and I sat on the bed and looked at the two suitcases and I started to cry. She was gone. She didn’t get to learn French. She didn’t get to see the Danube River. She didn’t get to say goodbye to anyone.

  I crawled up into her spot on the bed, the place where she died, and I hoped that she didn’t feel alone when she went. I hoped that she knew that Vic was next to her.

  But I knew she didn’t want to go yet. I wanted to trade places with her, so she could do all the things she wanted to do before she died, and Vic could share them with her. I lay there all night thinking about it.

  And that’s when I had my idea.

  Internal Combustion

  Vic wasn’t really interested.

  The next night I cooked him a sausage and bean cassoulet. Vic said it tasted really good, but he was eating less and less. He seemed quiet and far away, like he was focused on something else.

  I knew it probably wasn’t the right time, but I couldn’t help asking. I had been thinking about it all day. I cleared away his plate and made him a cup of tea with one sugar and no milk. I was wearing a lime-green cotton dress with a Peter Pan collar. I sat down and smoothed the skirt out over my legs.

  ‘What’s something that you always wanted to do?’ I asked. ‘Like, something really fun or frightening or even dangerous?’

  Vic didn’t really give it much thought.

  ‘I dunno mate.’

  ‘Say there were no consequences, or no problems with money or what anybody thought, and you were allowed to do the one thing that you’ve always dreamed about doing, what would it be?’

  Vic just shrugged. I tried again.

  ‘I thought maybe we could each do something we always wanted to do before we … you know. And I thought maybe we could help each other do it together.’

  Vic wasn’t really listening. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose and looked really pained and uncomfortable and tired and I realised it was a stupid idea and I lost hope in it.

  After I finished reading Edie’s diaries, I spent more time with Vic in the garage as he sorted through everything. It was comforting being around him. He worked slowly and carefully. I watched him take things apart and check them. Sometimes he fixed them or cleaned them, or threw them away.

  One day he needed help shifting a big piece of machinery so he could work on it while he sat down. It was heavy and red. We put it down on a sheet of cardboard. I had black grease on my arms.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s an old HR engine block.’

  ‘How does it work?’

  ‘The engine?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Internal combustion.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Vic looked up at me.

  ‘You really wanna know?’

  I never had any interest in cars, but I liked asking Vic questions, and I liked being
shown things.

  ‘Yeah, I do.’

  ‘Grab that milk crate over there and come sit down. I’ll teach you the same way my old man taught me.’

  Over the next couple of days we took the engine apart, and Vic explained how it all worked. He had a really patient way of demonstrating what each part did. I found it hard at first, because there were so many things to remember. But once we removed the cylinder head and the manifolds, and Vic turned the flywheel by hand and pointed to where the fuel and air made a small explosion that pushed the piston down, and showed me how a tiny spark was the start of a chain of events that made the wheels go round, I finally understood. I was amazed. It was all so intricate. Vic popped the hood of the Kingswood and taught me how all the other parts worked together. Every little piece had something important to do.

  Vic showed me all the things that were wrong with the HR engine. There was rust all over the block and the cylinder head cover. There was burned oil in the exhaust manifold. The valves needed refacing and the springs were tired and the piston rings were corroded. It needed new spark plugs and a timing belt and a head gasket.

  ‘Mostly wear and tear and old age,’ he said. ‘It’s had its run.’

  ‘Will it still work though?’

  Vic wiped it down with a rag.

  ‘Not without a lot of coughing and sputtering. But if somebody wanted to do the work, it could still tick over alright.’

  ‘We could fix it,’ I said. ‘You could teach me.’

  Vic shook his head.

  ‘No mate, this one’s a bit too far gone.’

  ‘But we know what’s wrong with it.’

  ‘It’s not as easy as that. I’m not really set up for repair here, and parts for these old motors are hard to source. You’ve got to scour through wreckers’ yards or look in the classifieds. Remember what this is?’