Blueberry

by Glenna Thomson

  ‘This is a very beautiful house. There is much money here,’ Enrico whispered.

  I went to a tall antique buffet for a sneaky look at the photos. A studio portrait of a grey-haired couple, both handsomely dressed – I guessed the parents. There was a younger Shane, rock climbing with a full harness and ropes. And at the back was a colour portrait of his graduation, gowned and wearing a mortar board: his sideburns were longer and thicker, his beard was full and untrimmed. He looked more like an earnest country vet than he did now. A fine layer of dust was on the surface of the buffet.

  Further along, a big plasma was set into a cabinet. The coffee table was the size of a single bed and was made from heavy planks of timber. On its surface were newspapers, an iPad and a Lonely Planet guide to Zambia. The couches were light-tan worn leather and the silk cushions were various bright patterns. I liked the way everything fitted together, it looked all right.

  When Sophie tried to pat the cat, it sprang to the floor. That’s when we heard voices. I reached out and Sophie put her hand in mine.

  Shane strode in, open-faced, smiling, and he came towards me with his arms out. I lifted my face for the hello kiss that seemed to be coming, but he pulled back, or hesitated, and I realised it was my hand he’d been going for. And Enrico grinned stupidly as he shook Shane’s hand because he was impressed with his house.

  We followed Shane to the kitchen, a large ivory-coloured painted and tiled room with dark timber benches and stainless steel appliances. He poured rice into a boiling saucepan and stirred the large pot on the stove.

  ‘Hope you like curry,’ he said.

  I was worried where Charlie was. There was no sign of Warren. I glanced over my shoulder. Shane and Enrico were talking about the rain, the budding flowers and the problem of removing the dead prunings that lay between the rows.

  Then there was movement, and I knew the shuffle of Charlie’s footfall. I turned and a fine-boned man not much taller than me, with narrow shoulders, was standing behind me. He was wearing tortoiseshell square-framed glasses and was dressed too formally for a casual dinner. Living in Singapore, Asia’s expat-hub, he was the parody of a colonial self-important white male and I could not believe he’d ever lived in my rundown old house.

  ‘Good evening. I’m Warren. So we finally meet.’ He shook my hand, firmly and quickly.

  I turned to look for Charlie. He was on the couch at the other end of the room, looking like he had already had enough. If we were home he would have gone straight to bed.

  Warren pointed at Sophie. ‘So this is your daughter?’

  Sophie and the cat were sitting on the ledge, staring at each other.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And this is Enrico, who is living with us and helping with Charlie.’

  Enrico – in his baggy red pants and green sweatshirt, with his hair tied up high, long sausage dreadlocks all bound in the orange band – stepped forward. Cotton bracelets were on his thin wrist; his outstretched hand looked rough and strong.

  ‘Ciao, sir.’

  As if someone had called his name Warren jerked around and went to the mantel above the firebox and picked up his half-full wine glass. I was confused by his rudeness and was looking between them when Shane spoke. ‘Warren?’ He paused, waiting for him to look up.

  ‘This is Enrico. I think you missed his introduction.’

  There was a beat, a moment of wondering.

  ‘Enrico is Italian,’ Shane said. ‘He’s pruning the orchard.’

  Warren smiled thinly. ‘How do you do?’ he said making no attempt to step forward and shake Enrico’s now withdrawn hand.

  I considered then his association with the blueberry orchard – his memories of it being pruned, the workers that he would have seen come and go.

  ‘So, Warren,’ I said, ‘did you ever work in the orchard?’

  ‘Not if I could help it.’

  ‘You didn’t enjoy it?’

  Charlie stirred on the couch, listening.

  ‘Not even the harvest?’

  Warren looked at me uneasily and I could see the clever design of his glasses disguised marshmallow bags under his blue eyes. We were socially constrained and not able to say what really needed to be said. So he offered me a glass of shiraz and we found a safe topic to discuss – local red wines – and soon we were all seated.

  Charlie, sitting next to Shane, looked very small and distracted, his mouth slightly open as if he’d lost his train of thought.

  Halfway through the meal, after I had learned the cat’s name was Daphne, that the horses were not Shane’s but were agisted, and that the local fire guard group would be calling me to join up, Warren asked me why I had moved to Huntly.

  ‘The short story is I wanted to do something different.’

  ‘And what’s the long story?’ he asked.

  I smiled. ‘Never mind about that.’

  ‘I heard you were in PR.’

  I knew all about that put-down tone – the one that implied PR was fluff, light-weight. I didn’t answer, but picked up my glass and sipped. Shane scratched the side of his neck.

  ‘Do you like living in Singapore?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  Warren was a boozer. The rest of us were nursing a second glass, yet he was onto a second bottle.

  ‘Charlie tells me your wife has an art gallery?’

  Warren took on an inward look and laughed without sound. His teeth were pink, wine stained. ‘Don’t go to the art. Not that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Shane stood up. ‘Anyone want coffee or tea?’

  And with all of that, and Sophie bored, drawing with her pencils and paper and Charlie slumped and exhausted, I said it was time to go.

  Charlie was the first to stand, Enrico quickly at his side, and they headed for the back door together. It was in that space, between the step from the family room out to the back porch, that Warren reached out and tapped my elbow. The others were in front; Shane was pulling on his boots.

  ‘A quick word,’ he said.

  I stared into his flushed face and he smiled broadly as if to cajole me to cooperate with him. He leaned forward, making us stand too close. His breath was sour and I thought how awful it was to be staring into his face and seeing Charlie’s eyes.

  I took a side step away.

  ‘My father spoke to me tonight,’ he said. ‘He insists that I give you money for your new floor. For your information, I’m his legal representative on all matters and I’ve refused. I want this made clear to you. My father will not be paying for your floor.’

  ‘I’ve not asked Charlie for money.’

  He raised his eyebrows and smiled tightly.

  ‘Come on,’ Sophie said, tugging me forward.

  ‘I’ll be taking Dad to his next couple of radiotherapy sessions. Just so that’s clear.’

  ‘Does Charlie know?’

  ‘What do you mean? He’s my father.’

  I allowed Sophie to pull me along, out through the porch and into the chilly night air. Warren didn’t follow.

  Enrico was helping Charlie into the passenger seat and Shane was patting the dog.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Shane said to me.

  ‘I don’t know. Warren’s taking Charlie to his treatments on Monday and Tuesday.’

  ‘Well, that’s okay. It’ll give you a break.’

  ‘I feel uneasy about it.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’ll be fine. And I can take Charlie myself on Wednesday and some days the week after. I’ll let you know.’

  And this time he did lean in. So it happened – with one hand light on my arm, his lips were on my cheek, briefly. Enough to feel the brush of soft whiskers.

  We all said goodnight.

  Charlie waited until we were on Josephs Road before he spoke: ‘Sorry, love.’

  ‘Sorry about what?’

  ‘You having to put up with all of that.’ He flicked his hand back towards Shane’s.

  ‘The curry was all right,’ I sa
id.

  ‘Well, there’s that.’

  Looking at Charlie’s profile against the car window, the bush shadows running alongside him, the lines on his face seemed deeper and his eyes more sunken.

  ‘So why don’t you and Warren get along?’ I said.

  ‘I can’t say I know. He’s been gone from home a very long time. More than thirty-five years.’

  A possum with a two-toned bushy tail and black round, staring eyes sat on the edge of the road, then darted away.

  Across the cattle grid we went, and then we were home.

  17

  ON Monday morning Charlie stood at the lounge room window waiting for Warren to arrive. His back was to me and the outline of his body was sharp against the outside light. He’d had a haircut and his white curls were now gone. His hands were in the pockets of his navy suit. The way the jacket sat across his back, I could see his shoulders would have been broad once; the shoulder padding sagged down. He was wearing his favourite charcoal shirt with the burgundy stitching.

  The house was very quiet. I felt anxious.

  I touched Charlie’s arm and when he turned the dimples came.

  ‘Are you worried about going with Warren today?’

  ‘No, love. It’s all right.’

  ‘Take this anyway.’ And I pressed into his hand a torn page from my notepad with my mobile number on it. ‘In case you need it.’

  He didn’t speak, but pushed it in his pocket and slowly turned back to the window.

  A few minutes later, Warren’s rented black Commodore thrummed across the cattle grid.

  Soon after Charlie left, Ryan and his team arrived. Without any hesitation they got to work, pulling the old vinyl away and carrying it outside, dumping it on the open ground not far from the packing shed.

  I went to the orchard and stood alongside Enrico and pruned. We were four weeks late finishing, but we only had twelve rows to go. Enrico was faster than me – he said I was too fussy with poco snips, little snips that would make no difference. He was ruthless at taking out the old wood, the grandmothers, and he was exacting with the height.

  As the sun rose and the shadowline the tall cypresses cast across the orchard shortened, I worried about Charlie and kept watching the time. And during that unease, while creating the vase, my mind filled with invented stories. I pictured Charlie somehow tricked and abandoned at the unit Warren had rented for him in Euroa. I saw him standing inside four empty walls, alone, bewildered, sad. I wished I had bought him his own mobile phone and taught him how to use it.

  ‘Signor Warren will look after his papà,’ Enrico said. ‘You are too worried.’

  At lunchtime, Enrico and I made sandwiches and cups of tea in the makeshift kitchen in the garage. A hard plastic table served as our bench and dining table. We had relocated the fridge and microwave and Enrico had brought his camping stove across from the shearing shed. The kitchen cupboards had been emptied, the contents put in boxes. There was the outside toilet. I didn’t have a solution for showering or the laundry, except to manage with a daily sponge bath and handwashing our clothes, or taking them to the laundromat in Euroa.

  We ate lunch sitting on camping chairs outside and I lifted my face to the early spring sun. We talked about all the jobs to be done before the harvest – and we still hadn’t finished pruning. The dead canes and old wood had to be cleared away from between the rows, then we had to fertilise, and check every individual irrigation dripper.

  At the earliest time Warren and Charlie were due to arrive I started listening for tyres across the cattle grid. But when the builders plugged in their circular saws and started cutting the floorboards away, it was impossible to hear anything else. A stocky man wearing thick leather gloves carted the decayed planks away and dropped them onto the pile of vinyl.

  I was in the garage kitchen when they arrived. Charlie carefully lifted himself out of the passenger seat and stood looking around at the unfamiliar vehicles and growing mountain of wood with the vinyl underneath. He seemed confused, unsure where to go. Warren reversed and drove away without looking back to see his father safely inside.

  Charlie wanted to lie down. We had temporarily relocated his bed to the lounge room between a bookcase and the wall. But the shrill and constant buzzing of the circular saws made sleep impossible in the house. So we walked together through the rose garden to his studio and I made up his daybed with sheets, a doona and his pillow from the house. I pulled his shoes off, and the doona over his fully clothed body.

  ‘I’ll bring you a cup of tea and something to eat later on.’

  He whispered, ‘Thank you.’ I bent down and kissed him on the forehead.

  The last thing Ryan and the builders did before they left was lay a temporary boardwalk of chipboard planks along the joists so they could walk around. And because we were restricted to living in the front of the house, we started using the front door to enter and leave.

  The next morning when Warren arrived to pick up Charlie, he parked beside the builders’ utes and knocked on the frame of the open back door. Beside him on the window ledge was a boom-box playing techno rap from the local FM.

  I approached from the lounge and that’s where I found him, standing on the back step staring up towards me, into the house, perhaps seeing himself as a young child there. He came straight in, his feet carrying him forward like they must have done thousands of times before, up the back steps and into the porch, except this time he stepped onto a width of chipboard with the dank raw earth a metre below. He was wearing his version of casual clothes – a pair of cream trousers, a pink shirt and a navy double-breasted jacket with its four gold buttons all done up. A shadow of concern crossed his face as he felt the lightness of the chipboard under his shiny black shoes.

  ‘This is unacceptable,’ he said.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Dad living here.’

  ‘It’s temporary.’

  He sniffed.

  Ryan approached, a phone pressed against his ear, wanting to pass. There was nowhere to move and Warren and Ryan did an awkward shuffle until Warren found himself straddled with one foot on the chipboard to the laundry and the other on the chipboard to the kitchen. When he straightened, he asked where Charlie was. I pointed ahead.

  Warren walked cautiously along the boardwalk until he reached solid floor. The croon of Ella Fitzgerald was a weird combination with the back-of-house rap music with a heavy base line. Charlie was sitting on the couch, Blondie was at his feet. The painting of Marilyn was leaning against the wall behind him. The room was in disarray, holding the dining table and chairs, boxes of crockery, plastic containers and saucepans, and two laundry baskets spilling dirty washing, all pressed in alongside the couch and the buffet.

  Charlie pushed himself up from his chair, got his balance and turned Ella off.

  ‘Where’s he sleeping?’ Warren said to me.

  ‘During the day he’s out in his studio. But at night, he’s here. This bed is more comfortable than the daybed.’

  Warren looked behind the bookcase into his father’s crude but private space. I had hung a medium-sized oil of red-and-orange bougainvillea – the colours clashed in thick layered dabs. The bed would be unmade, I knew without looking.

  Charlie was staring out the window, his jaw was tight and his nostrils flared.

  ‘I’m not happy with Dad sleeping here,’ Warren said.

  I turned to Charlie. ‘Do you want to move to the studio while the floor is being fixed?’

  ‘I like it here,’ he said.

  Then he looked at Warren and spoke as if he’d rehearsed it. ‘Now I want this money business sorted out. Greer won’t take anything from me. I’ve tried. So I want you to sort out an arrangement, for food and things.’ Spit sat in the corners of his lips.

  ‘It’s time to go,’ Warren said, taking a couple of steps to look closely into Marilyn’s face.

  ‘Answer me,’ Charlie demanded.

  ‘I’ve not received an invoice or her bank details.
I’ve asked.’

  Charlie turned to me, frowning, with narrowed blue eyes. ‘Well, get on with it. Send it to him.’ Then to Warren, ‘And when you get it, add on fifteen thousand for my contribution to this floor. And I damn well mean it.’

  ‘Dad. That’s enough.’

  Charlie pointed. ‘You listen to me. It’s my goddamned money and I’ll do what I want with it. Fifteen thousand. You hear?’

  Warren put his hands in his trouser pockets and stared unfazed between me and his father, eventually settling his gaze on Marilyn.

  ‘I’m not leaving until you give me an answer,’ Charlie said.

  The builders started firing their nail guns.

  ‘We’ll talk about it in the car.’

  ‘That’s not good enough. I want a guarantee.’

  ‘All right then. I heard you. Now let’s go.’

  Warren brought his car around to the front door and I watched him open his driver’s door and sit behind the wheel, leaving Charlie to get into the passenger seat by himself, stiffly and slowly. I always pulled the seatbelt down for him so he didn’t have to rotate that far. He looked small and frail as they drove out.

  I spent the day in the orchard with Enrico pruning, and when I went to pick up Sophie from school Charlie still hadn’t arrived.

  I dialled Warren’s Singapore mobile and the long beeps ran out. I left a message. Then I phoned the hospital. He had left with Warren on schedule at twelve-thirty.

  My next call was to Shane.

  ‘Does Warren have a local mobile?’

  ‘Don’t know. Why?’

  ‘Charlie’s not home from his treatment. He left the hospital three hours ago.’

  Silence.

  ‘Do you know where he is?’

  ‘I don’t know what’s going on.’

  I knew then Charlie was in the new unit. But I didn’t know what to do. Should I call the police to report the kidnapping of an old man by his son?

  ‘He’s in Euroa, isn’t he?’