by Kate Lyons
The bantam had been on duty again. She’d handed Ursula another plastic bag. Inside it, things they’d found in his trouser pockets. No apology that these had been mysteriously mislaid the day before. A diver’s watch, expensive looking. Didn’t go with the cheap coat or the worn-out boots. The missing money from the wallet, ten dollars and some change. More grimy TAB receipts, a Ventolin inhaler. A wedding ring, the gold band frail as sucked barley sugar. A set of rosary beads which slithered, chilly and familiar, through Ursula’s hands. But when Ursula had gone to take them, the nurse had grabbed the bag back again. More questions, more forms to sign. Ursula had fought an urge to stick her own palm out, collect the gum with which the nurse was smacking the end of each dreary vowel.
Then the doctor who would sign the death certificate had appeared. Plump, officious, he had one of those little hair verandahs gelled into the front of his head. He’d said he was sorry for the long wait and for her loss, although he didn’t appear to be. Like the nurse, he didn’t really look at her, seemed more interested in his sheaf of notes. If she could just confirm some details. Wouldn’t take long.
‘You’re Mr McCullough’s sister, is that right? Mrs McCullough?’ Ms, she corrected him. ‘On these Medicare records you’re listed as next of kin. But his details were out of date. We had quite a job tracking you down.’
He paused, biro hovering. What did he want, a round of applause?
‘There are a few things we’d like to check. Circumstances suggest a chronic heart condition. I presume you know your brother had a pacemaker installed?’
So young for heart trouble. Her own kept thumping, reliably, painfully, against her ribs.
‘Problem is we’ve had trouble finding any record of the operation or of any ongoing treatment. Your brother’s last visit to a medical practitioner appears to have been in Queensland, over fifteen years ago. Not for his heart. For a broken arm. He’d also had all his teeth out, quite recently. He seems a little young for that.’
She thought of baby teeth, rattling in a palm. Of a small boy’s white teeth, with a big gap in the front, just like hers. Of a small heart, light and fast as a bird’s, beating against hers.
‘Would you happen to know the details of any of his health professionals? His GP? Even his dentist would do.’
She shook her head. Refusing to open her mouth, reveal her own crumbling remnants. To say, this and this. This is the least of the things I didn’t know.
She stood for what seemed like hours in that corridor, jostled by trolleys and drip-fed patients, straining to hear what the doctor was saying over the yakking of nurses, the shrieking of phones. Like so many young people, the man seemed to swallow his sentences, and she was forced to keep saying, excuse me, can you repeat that, like some old dame with an ear trumpet. How serious was her brother’s asthma? Was he a smoker? She nodded, thinking about the rollies in the shoe. What about drinking? Not to her knowledge. She blushed, remembering the stink of port in that room above the pub. His jaundice suggested otherwise. The little hair verandah waggled side to side.
‘The thing is, Mrs McCullough, your brother appears much older than his records would suggest.’ He was speaking very slowly and loudly now, as if she was stupid as well as deaf. ‘That’s not unusual, though, if he was sleeping rough. Was he indigent, do you know?’
‘Indigenous?’
‘Indigent. Homeless.’
‘Thank you. I do know what it means.’
At one point she tried to push past him but he put an arm out, as if herding geese. They weren’t ready yet, because of the bus accident. She hoped it wasn’t a school bus. That it was a small white bus favoured by drunk footballers. That there were no small broken bodies beyond the green rubber doors.
‘Just one more thing, for our records. Would you know your brother’s most recent permanent address?’
She’d been forced finally to admit that she hadn’t seen Ray in over twenty years. The doctor frowned and scribbled, and she’d drawn herself up, summoning the authority of those old women who used to rule her, as if a rosary rested against her own sternum, a large wooden cross hooked like an extra pelvis around her waist. Tapped the clipboard until he was forced to look her in the eye.
‘I won’t know anything for sure until I see him. And I’d like to do that now. My sister’s waiting. She’s not well.’
By the time she got in there, she was almost expecting it. After the Bible and the teeth and the newspapers, the fancy diver’s watch and the rosary beads, she was so caught between clashing versions of the man on the trolley, each one leaching steadily at her memory of the boy, she felt doubled also. One version of her stood in the small green room, looking at a too-small body covered by a sheet. The other floated somewhere up near the fluorescents, for some reason bearing the John Lennon glasses and craggy nose of Sister Ignatius, the steeliest of the convent nuns. Ignatius had taught physics and sewing with equal rigour. Abided no sloppy science, no crooked hems. Ursula remembered Sister lighting a match with her dry, nunnish fingers, levitating a floating lemon slice within an upturned glass. Observe Ursula. What can you infer?
Had it been another nun, Ursula would have said a miracle and earned a holy card. But it was truth or nothing with Ignatius. Truth, or Sister’s fist grinding into the tender part of your spine.
‘Take the sheet off please.’
‘Oh. Right. I’m not sure. The paramedics …’
‘There should be a scar. If you want me to be sure.’
She found if she looked in quick snatches, like amputated, oddly angled photographs, she could just about manage not to faint. Rabbity thighs, suffering Jesus ribs. Chest hair like something sprouted in a cellar. Purplish feet, small as the boots. A sad little pot belly, pale as a fish. She remembered a boy fresh from the river, sleek as a seal. This flesh had rarely seen the sun. The body had been washed of course but she believed here and there she could see the shadow of ancient dirt.
‘Mrs McCullough? Should I get a chair?’
‘Not unless you need one.’ Stand up straight, Ursula. Pay attention. What’s the difference between what you see and what you know?
She forced herself, against fear and disgust, to take her time. Tiny hands, chalky nails, telltale blush on the palms. She knew what that meant, having done voluntary work in an old man’s hospice, long ago. Couldn’t touch those hands, didn’t want to, but knew if she did, they’d be soft as a girl’s. She noted too, the weedy arm muscles which had never wielded axe or hammer, the mole on the left shoulder. The absence of a scar on the stomach, near the thigh and across the hip, that long flare of skin stitched up by Dad with a darning needle soused in brandy and heated on the stove. Instead, a strange brown splotch on the right collarbone. A trail of splats, like dried gravy. Maybe just dirt.
Across the breastbone and rib cage, big bruises, in the shape of paddles or powerful hands. Somewhere beneath that skin, a faithless nest of wires. She imagined it as red, plastic, heart shaped. A child’s toy, in need of batteries or winding up.
No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t bring herself to look at the middle of things, as if the groin bore one of those criminal blackout squares. Couldn’t bear the idea of the sad wrinkled greyish objects she might see. Anyway, the last time she’d seen Ray unclothed was in the bath at the age of ten. Always a secretive little boy.
‘Mrs McCullough?’
Finally she forced herself to look at the face.
‘Is this your brother?’
And because he wanted her to say yes and because he was a man in authority all strung about with ballpoints and name tags and stethoscopes, and such was the old habit of obedience, as if she was kneeling beside someone in stiff carapace stinking of incense and tobacco, asking her to swear to mysteries beyond her own brain and eyes, she almost started to nod. The bulbous nose, the pinched little jockey face, the undershot jaw. Cheeks scrawled with plum-coloured capillaries, skin cured to leather by wind and rum. No forehead to speak of, eyes too close together.
Didn’t they realise how beautiful Ray had been?
‘No.’
‘Take your time. You said it had been a while.’
She turned away. The room swung back to its correct angle. Became just a dingy space with a dead stranger in it. She buttoned her coat.
‘I told you. It’s not him. However, I would like to know how he came to possess Ray’s things.’
She was using her teacher’s voice, her nun’s voice, but it was just habit. Didn’t mean it, didn’t really read the forms they handed to her to sign, all the new bits of paper she’d somehow generated, attesting to this or certifying that. The body sliced free again, even from what little had held it, to that room above the pub.
Tilda had been right, for the wrong reasons. Now the police would have to be called. Back at reception, the doctor told her they would want to talk to her and any personal effects she’d found in the room must be handed over straight away. She heard herself promising to make herself available, to deliver to reception, as soon as possible, the things in the crate, now stowed in the boot of her car. First, however, she had to check on her sister, who needed to take her medication and because of this they had to get something to eat, from the cafeteria. After that, she’d be back. Within the hour, if required.
She’d felt guilty of course, as she’d tugged Tilda down the nearest fire exit and hurried her past the foyer gift shop, ignoring Tilda’s fervent desire for a pink and silver ‘It’s a Girl!’ balloon. Breaking speed limits, she’d driven straight to the station, Ray’s crate rattling forlornly in the boot. While Tilda bought supplies at the kiosk, she’d written the letter to Harry. Lying again. At some point, in some clear, untangled future she couldn’t yet imagine, it would have to stop.
Driving out now toward the highway, she promised herself that as soon as she could she would sort out, to the best of her knowledge, what was Ray’s and what had belonged to that poor man on the trolley. Whatever she didn’t have a right to she’d post back to the hospital. Nothing else for it. She’d wasted nearly two days already and she couldn’t bear the idea of another night in that mice-infested pub. If the police were involved, she’d have to prove somehow that she had a right to those things in the crate. And she had no proof, just the Medicare card, a library book which may or may not bear Ray’s handwriting. Tilda’s teeth.
How on earth would she go about explaining those? She saw hours and days of it, waiting around in long green corridors, all those questions without answers, opening back and back. Her mouth closing and closing on things she wouldn’t tell, couldn’t say, didn’t know.
She fixed her mind on those things in the boot. Something connected them, fragile as a fossil in a rock. Even those bits and pieces that didn’t belong to Ray might have something to tell her. But any inkling she had would disappear under the harsh gaze of waiting rooms and hospital lights.
She’d been stupid last night. Too tired, too sentimental. So lost in empty pockets and secret codes she hadn’t seen what was staring her in the face. The drycleaning docket, the library stamp on the book of poems. Both from Bourke. Ray’s name on that Medicare card. The first sign she’d had of him since he’d left home over thirty years ago. Not much to go on. A coat, a name, some teeth. A feeling. Faith, maybe, after all this time.
Have faith, Harry was always saying. But in what? Faith itself? Faith was sly. Faith was blind. In turn, it blinded you, with spells and beads and bits of marble. You might as well hug a statue and expect it to hug you back. And while you were staring at your shoes, giving thanks for having feet, you could be run over by a bus.
She swerved to the gutter, earning a blast from the semi behind. Did what she’d been dreading all morning. Rummaging through the glove box for the new mobile Harry had insisted on buying her after her old one had been stolen by Tilda and thrown from the window of a bus, she dialled the only number in it. Harry had programmed himself in.
It rang so long she began to hope she could just leave a message. When he did pick up, it sounded like he was standing in the rain.
‘Harry Fredericks speaking.’
He always answered the phone like that, as if he was already running the natural therapies clinic he was always just about to set up.
‘Hi. It’s me.’
‘Sorry? Who’s that?’
She wound the window up.
‘It’s me, Ursula. What’s that noise?’
It sounded like he was sitting under a waterfall. Maybe he was on one of his meditation retreats.
‘Oh, thank God. Where are you? Are you all right?’
‘Yes. Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘Well, your note … is Tilda with you? Is she OK?’
‘She’s fine. I can’t hear you though. Is there something wrong with your phone?’
‘Sorry. I was just about to get in the shower. Give me a moment. Don’t hang up.’
She waited, listening to traffic rumble and her shower drip. Imagining Harry in her bathroom, one of her pink towels wrapped around his waist. Or worse, no towel at all. She was always coming home to a glimpse of his defeated buttocks through the bathroom steam. He always seemed to forget to shut the door. Because she and Tilda weren’t there, he’d have his clothes laid out in her lounge room so he could get dressed by the heater. He was always complaining about the cold in his room. One of his vintage suits probably, it being his day for band practice, maybe the one with the pinstripes, and that bilious ruffled shirt he liked, something a real estate agent might have worn to a wedding in the seventies. Salmon pink, rosy and bulbous as Harry himself. Teamed with socks, sandals and not quite enough irony. She blamed the Marist Brothers herself.
‘Hello? I’m back. I’m here. Ursula, what on earth’s going on? I’ve been so worried. I tried ringing, but your phone was off.’ She saw them now, six missed calls. She’d had the phone buried at the bottom of her bag. ‘Actually, someone did ring here last night, on the home line. But you know I don’t answer that any more. Was it you? There was no message. Sometimes the message bank plays up.’
There was no earthly reason she should have rung him, no reason she should feel guilty, but this was Harry’s special talent, this vague, oily reproachfulness. It seemed to seep through the phone, covering her in irritable sweat.
‘No. I didn’t ring. Listen Harry, I’m driving, so I can’t talk long. I need a favour.’
‘Driving? I thought you caught the train.’
‘I did. And now I’m driving. I hired a car. Are you home tonight?’
‘We could have taken mine. I could have driven. I did offer, remember?’
He had. The very thought of it. Harry beside her, all the way there, all the way back. Harry driving at his regulation ten ks below the speed limit, treating her to long disquisitions on Aboriginal place names or the evil of GM crops. Harry grilling the pub landlord on the provenance of his frozen vegetables and his white sliced bread. The thought made her wind the window down again, fumble around in her handbag for the dead man’s last rollie, start peeling off the No Smoking sign on the dash.
‘Anyway, you’re coming home now, aren’t you? How’s your dad, by the way?’
‘Sorry?’ Then she remembered the note she’d left. ‘Oh. Yes. He’s fine.’
A long, priest-like pause. ‘It wasn’t your dad, was it? It was that other business all along.’
She had the rollie in her mouth, the book of matches at the ready, before remembering those tan-coloured teeth, the little blue lips. She spat the cigarette out, threw it out the window, into the slipstream of a passing truck.
Harry sighed.
‘I knew it. All those phone calls. You know, you really can’t keep doing this Ursula. It’s not good for Tilda. She’s getting worse. She needs some proper therapy.’
Ursula stuck her whole head out the window. Got a face full of truck fumes so she pulled it back in.
‘I wish to God you’d never put that notice in the paper. Offering money, that’s just madness. I did warn you, didn’t I? Many times
.’
So many times, she’d wanted to bash her head against her bedroom wall.
‘It was a hospital who rang, Harry. Nothing to do with the paper. They weren’t after money. They asked me to come. I could hardly say no.’
‘I really can’t believe this is still going on. Now we’ll have to change our number again.’
Our number. Her phone. She should ask him to move out. Should never have invited him to move in in the first place. But when he’d appeared at her front door one afternoon, having seen the notice for a lodger she’d put up on a telephone pole, taken one of the little scraps of paper and rung her, telling her he was a quiet, mature man looking for a quiet place to live, he’d seemed a solution of sorts. To her lack of money. To Tilda. With all his courses and therapy and phone counselling, he’d appeared unfazed when she explained about Tilda. And with all his night sessions and volunteering, he’d be at home during the day, could keep an eye on Tilda when Ursula was at work. And with all those jobs, she’d thought he’d be out when she was in. She hadn’t banked on a bunch of alcos and ex-addicts and mad people collecting like flotsam in her lounge room every weekend. People like Tilda really, but worse, because they kept finding God behind her sofa cushions. A stink of incense and chemical delusion greeting her at the front door every Friday afternoon.
‘So what happened this time? Another dead end I suppose.’
‘No. Not really. Listen, I don’t have time to explain. Why I rang. I’m going away for a bit. I’ve put Tilda on the train, so she can make her next appointment. I was hoping you could pick her up.’
Another pause, a stunned one this time.
‘On her own? Really? Was that wise?’
‘Probably not. She gets to Central around eight. I told her to wait where all the buses come in.’
‘But I’ve got that course tomorrow. I told you. I’ll be away.’
‘Well, if you can’t do it, just ring the clinic, get them to send someone. I can pay. Use the cash in my bedroom drawer.’
‘But where are you going?’