by Gee, Maurice
‘He’s not in Parliament.’
The girls from the three schools had gone. Some men I took for lawyers came out of the court and talked for a while on the footpath. High at the back of us construction workers in hard hats walked about in narrow places falling at the side. Adrian twisted around to watch. He had red marks on his neck where Bets had bitten him. How dare she? I thought; then told myself it was natural, and anyway he wasn’t mine to protect. But he seemed mine, and that was dangerous. The invisible mending I’d done on my feelings was coming apart.
I pulled my eyes away from him and watched for Gordon; and knew from the way a woman walking down the footpath hesitated, changed her line, remade her shoulders, that he was there, walking up, a few steps out of my sight. I had a moment of incomprehension, a wiping out of normal sense, not knowing who would appear: Cyril with his quilt and bucket, with his eyes fixed on the pavement, or Gordon, smiling, six feet tall, raising his arm to wave at me.
‘What’s wrong?’ Adrian said, looking round.
‘Nothing, nothing,’ I replied, and kept my brother to myself for a moment longer. There he was: scissored jacket, bucket, quilt, head on its perpetual forward slant. His vertebrae must be fused in that position.
He went behind a parked bus and I thought: Perhaps he won’t come out the other end, he’ll just vanish. I felt my twisting skein of grief again – chest, throat, head – and when he shuffled out and paused for a moment to let a schoolboy make a loop around him, I swallowed hard and set myself, and said to Adrian: ‘Do you know that man over there?’
He was fingering the bite marks on his neck. ‘You mean Cyril? He comes up Cuba Street, poor old sod. He’s got no brain.’
‘He sleeps on Tinakori Hill,’ I said.
‘Yeah, I know.’
He watched Gordon walk past the gates of Parliament. I said nothing, but let my silence press on the back of his head, and felt the little electrical jolt as he understood – like the shock that sprang between Gordon and me when his elbow joint was dislocated. He swung his head and stared into my face.
‘Hey, no, Alice, you’re not saying … Hey, no.’
‘He’s Gordon,’ I said.
‘You’re shitting me. That guy’s Cyril.’
‘I told you he changed his name.’
‘Why? How did he get like that?’
‘No one knows.’
Adrian had risen to his feet. He breathed out a hard, half-accepting groan, yet acceptance of the fact that this man was Gordon followed like the closing of his hand. He took hold. He had no prejudice against down-and-outs. But how? He wanted to know how.
‘No,’ I said, ‘don’t follow him.’
‘Why not? Let me go.’
‘Sit down, Adrian. Or come and sit in the car. He’s going to the place where he sleeps. You can find him whenever you want.’
Gordon crossed Hill Street and walked past the cathedral. I held Adrian by the pocket of his jeans.
‘I want to talk to him.’
‘He doesn’t talk. If you’ve seen him in Cuba Street you know. He hasn’t said a word to anyone for years. Except for thank you when they get in the way. He doesn’t look at anyone’s face.’
‘I’m his grandson, for Chrissake.’
‘And I’m his sister.’
We made a spectacle – an old woman holding a young man by his trousers, and with tears on her face. (I cry a lot lately.)
Adrian sat down and we were quiet. I dried my eyes and after a while said: ‘Now you know.’
‘How did he get like that? For Marlene?’
‘And the dead man she found. All the trouble.’
‘What are you doing about him, if you’re his sister?’
I gave him an account of that. It didn’t take long. I told him what I knew about Gordon’s life since the time he had reappeared in Wellington.
‘And you’re going to let him go on like this?’
‘What do you suggest?’
‘I don’t know. There must be something.’
‘I’ve been living in Wellington for more than ten years and I’ve never found out what it is. Don’t interfere, Adrian. No, I don’t mean that. You’ve got a right to be involved. But Gordon’s in a kind of balance. You can upset it like that.’ I tipped my hand. ‘Whatever you think, he’s got a life.’
‘Some life. Jesus!’
‘Are you going to make him do something else?’
He lifted my fingers out of his pocket and stepped into the road, but Gordon was past the traffic lights and out of sight.
‘You’ll get run over,’ I said.
‘Yeah, by a tram.’ He came back and sat down, moving sharply as I touched his shoulder. ‘If you’d told me this stuff a year ago he might not have been so bad.’
‘Do you think so? Do you really think you’re going to make a difference, where I can’t?’
‘At least I’ll be something new.’
‘There’s nothing new. I’m not sure there’s anything old. Whatever he keeps in his mind, that’s all there is, and nobody knows anything about it.’ I stopped myself, halfway between lying and telling the truth, then said, half evasively: ‘It’s probably just a single thing. Something that doesn’t move, like a statue, standing still,’ and I went on, foolishly, that Gordon cast no shadow except the one pooling around his feet, and everything, past and future, contracted into that – a thought I’d once had about myself.
‘You’re talking crap, Alice,’ Adrian said.
‘Perhaps I am. Will you take me home now? Then if you want to get away from me you can.’
We walked back to Aitken Street, where he opened the passenger door – he always remembers his manners. But before he went around to the driver’s side, he said: ‘That guy who got killed in Gordon’s yard, that would be someone called Cyril, right?’
‘Yes, Cyril Handy.’
‘So what’s it all about, taking his name? I reckon he did it.’
‘No, he did not. He was at work. Don’t try and play detectives, Adrian. Gordon had his reasons, whatever they were.’
‘I’ll bet.’
He got in the car and started the engine. I made him use Thorndon Quay and Sar Street instead of Molesworth Street, where he might speed up to overtake Gordon, and perhaps cause an accident. (He drives too hard, too fast: young people do.)
I told him about Fry-up House.
‘I want to see it.’
‘Not today. And you’ll have to promise not to go inside.’
‘Why? Do you want to keep him to yourself?’
‘That’s a cruel thing to say.’ I might have told him that sharing Gordon, in the last half hour, had brought me a kind of light-heartedness – or at any rate the kind of relief one feels when carrying a heavy bag and someone takes the handle to share the weight. It makes no difference to what’s in the bag, and you’re still attached to it, your hand stays clenched.
He said: ‘Yeah, I’m sorry. You must have had a pretty tough time, Alice.’
How easily I cry. I hope it’s going to stop when this is over – although I can’t work out what ‘over’ means.
‘One day, if you like, we’ll go and see his place, where he sleeps. When he’s not there.’ I wanted to ask: How are you, Adrian; how does it feel to find this out? But it seemed intrusive, seemed coarse, and I waited until he stopped at my gate to say: ‘I’m so sorry about all this.’
‘There’s no need to be. It’s the facts, isn’t it?’
‘You see why I couldn’t tell you?’
‘Yeah, I suppose. The thing is, Alice …’
I waited.
‘I promised Dad I’d find him and say who I was. I don’t want to upset the poor old guy, but if I just say hello and talk to him a bit …?’
‘No, Adrian.’
‘It can’t do any harm.’
‘It can. He’s found a way he can survive. He’s inside himself – as much of himself as he’s got left – and I think it’s so fragile. Any little thing … You can push h
im right over the edge.’
‘How do you know he’s not waiting for someone to get him out? If I just say: “Hi, I’m your grandson” …’
‘No, no.’
‘So, what? We just let him go on being – whatever he is?’
‘Yes, we do.’
We continued between discussion and argument and I thought: I love this boy; and too, more easily, for love induced a tear: At last I seem to have a friend. I had not had one of those since Neville died. We ordered a pizza – I musn’t let it become a habit – but he left soon after we’d eaten, saying that he’d promised to get back and let Bets know what had happened. I took that well because, if an old woman can say it, I’ve grown up as I open myself to love again. All I said was: ‘Don’t let her go and gawk at him, Adrian,’ which made him cross and sent him away with too many emotions upsetting him, on a day of upsets. I worried about him driving.
We had not made an arrangement to visit Fry-up House – I mean, to stand in the street and look at it – or Gordon’s hut in the pine trees. I did not really mind if Adrian went there by himself; in fact there came a settling in my mind when I thought of it, like the deeper settling in a bed when your partner climbs in. It was as if I could roll over and go to sleep.
Old age can be a blessing. I hoped Adrian and Bets would hold their conversation calmly, and after it be happy in that way – which I haven’t forgotten – that blesses the young. When I went to my own bed it didn’t seem lonely. I said goodnight to Gordon and slept as though I had company.
Christmas has come and gone. I thought, as I always do, of leaving a present in the hut – a bag of mince tarts, some chocolates with almond filling (he liked the flavour of almonds when he was a boy) – but, again as always, I rejected the idea, fearing he’d take fright and abandon the place. I come closest to knowing Gordon in his need to be alone – in his flight from contact with other humans. Yet there’s more to his refusal to look in faces than fear. There’s rejection. I’m the only person who knows that.
Adrian had the same idea – leave him something. I persuaded him against it. Bets said: ‘We should ask the old guy home for Christmas dinner.’ I told her he went to ‘Room at the Inn’ with all the other down-and-outs and if she felt strongly about it she could go down there and help serve the pudding or wash the dishes. They had me for Christmas dinner instead. The woman’s no cook, but I don’t complain about anything she does, or is, because she makes Adrian happy – frees him, makes him spark. She doesn’t seem to open up deeper places in him, or he in her, but perhaps I’m not reading things right. They laugh a lot, touch a lot, and send each other glances. Although I’m not sure where their relationship is heading, it has gone beyond a boy / girl thing, which pleases me in one way – he’s learning love – but worries me in another because although she has left girlhood behind, in most ways he is still a boy.
Maturely, he has forgiven me. He understands my reasons for lying. He makes in this a claim to know me. How wrong he is! I don’t know myself. I’ve admitted, although not to him, all the things I’ve done, but I haven’t discovered yet all I’m capable of.
Chapter Ten
New Year. What has happened? What happens next? Let me be calm about it – as calm as possible – and simply say what has gone on in these last two days. Putting it down will help me decide.
Adrian telephoned, trying, but not managing very well, to be kind: ‘I’m at the hospital, Alice. Listen, take it easy, eh? He’s had a stroke. We’ve got him in here. The doctors are saying he’s pretty bad. Bets is on her way to pick you up. I want to stay in case there’s any chance, you know, he might talk …’
There was more, a few words, commiserations, but my memory fails. I managed by doing things in order: changed out of slippers into shoes, put money from the drawer into my purse, checked that all the appliances were turned off, locked the house and waited at the bottom of the steps. I had not looked at my face in the bathroom mirror, the last thing I’ve done all my life before leaving the house.
Bets opened the car door like a taxi driver. ‘Take off that old cardigan, Alice.’ She’s a one to talk about clothes.
‘No, I’ll be cold’ – on that warm New Year’s day.
‘Sit there. Give me your keys. I’ll get you a jacket.’
I put it on and felt more in control, and stopped myself from asking what had happened – she was outside all this – but when we reached the bottom of the hill and came into Gordon’s territory, I had to say: ‘Who found him? How did you and Adrian hear?’
She slowed her speed while telling me. They had driven to Fry-up House and parked in the street. Adrian had walked past it before Christmas, but now he wanted to show Bets – and she was taken with the place (reaching out, I suppose, to grot and decay) and said she would come back and sketch it one day. She asked to see Gordon’s hut. Adrian had been there and told her about it – the brocade drapes and floor made from a door. Now she wanted to see for herself.
They followed Gordon’s usual route – Willis Street, Lambton Quay, Molesworth Street – expecting to see him on his way to Fry-up House. By the time they reached Grant Road, Adrian was worried. Late in the morning Gordon should be out and about. They waited half an hour in the car. Then Adrian said: ‘I’m going in.’ Bets, not to be left out, followed him.
‘We found him sort of half in half out of the place. It must have happened when he was leaving because he had his bucket and his quilt. I’ve done first aid. He was still alive. So I went for an ambulance while Adie stayed with him. I went into one of those houses across the road and rang from there.’
‘Thank you, Bets.’ It’s good to have people like her about in a crisis.
But at the hospital I said: ‘When I go in to see him I want just Adrian.’
‘Fair enough,’ she said.
Gordon was in intensive care. For the first time since that day in his Ghuznee Street bach I touched him. ‘Gordon, it’s Alice. It’s me.’ I kissed his forehead.
‘The doctor says talk to him,’ Adrian said. ‘But I’m not sure whether that’s for him or us. Anyway – don’t cry, Alice. I know how you feel.’
He tried to put his arms around me. Gently, not rudely, I put him off.
‘I want to sit with him for a while. Please, will you go away?’
‘Yeah. OK.’
‘But come back, won’t you? I want you to come back.’
‘OK, Alice.’
I held Gordon’s hand, not talking, but looking in his face. It was old and ruined but still held Gordon and the people he had been. Nothing was lost, but everything was turned about as he lay dying. I felt if I could say the right word he might slowly raise his eyelids – oh, the pain of it – and look at me. No meeting, no recognition, will repair our lives, but something remains that can be passed, an acknowledgement of who we are, Alice and Gordon.
I could not find the word, or words, but did not stay silent. I moved close and talked to him, saying: Alice, Gordon, over and over again; then Mother, Father, Loomis School, Loomis creek, myriads of places and names – and nourished and enjoyed myself in a curious way and momentarily wasn’t aware of him. He made no movement, no flicker. I remembered looking at Mother’s face before the undertaker closed her coffin. Father, beside me, said: ‘She looks beautiful.’ I had been thinking how ugly she became with her life removed. But Gordon, with life still in him somewhere, retained a margin of beauty over ugliness. I won’t describe him. He’d be a thing of bits, old and ruined and fallen to one side in all of them, but the whole of him, with his life still locked up inside – leave out beauty – filled me with love.
I murmured on, remembering us, until Adrian came back. ‘Are you two introduced?’ I said.
‘Yeah, I tried. There’s nothing there. But the doc says he might be able to hear. He just can’t let us know he hears. I don’t know whether I buy that.’
‘Try again. Tell him who you are.’
He took my place in the chair by the bed.
‘H
old his hand,’ I said.
He obeyed. ‘Hey, Cyril …’ then turned to me. ‘You don’t mind if I call him that?’
‘It’s the name he chose.’
‘Cyril. It’s me again. Adrian, remember? I’m your grandson. I’m Adrian Moore. I’m Rodney Moore’s son. You don’t know him but he was Marlene’s baby and yours too. Did you know she was pregnant? They never told you that. They told you she was somewhere else. When Dad was born they adopted him out. So he grew up without knowing who his real parents were. But he asked me to find you and say hello and give his love …’
He tried. There’s no way of knowing if Gordon heard. I left them after a while and telephoned Sheena Gourlay at Fry-up House. She said: ‘That’s that then. I wondered how long he’d last. He’s slowed down quite a bit in the last couple of weeks.’
I hadn’t noticed it, and I’m the one who notices.
‘Will you come and see him?’
‘Is he conscious? Does he know anyone?’
‘No.’
‘So what’s the point?’
‘Yes, all right. There isn’t one.’ I had thought she might come for her own sake. I said goodbye and went back to Adrian and Gordon.
‘Hey, Cyril, listen,’ Adrian said. ‘Hey, Gordon. It doesn’t matter what your name is, eh? Remember this: “I have come to iron my trousers.” Remember Nausea Bagwash, eh? “I have come to iron my trousers.” Hey, Cyril, hey Gordon, can you hear me?’
I was astonished that the boy remembered that bit of nonsense I’d passed on to him, and filled with pain at his hunger for my brother to wake up and know. Adrian wanted to say: ‘Dad sends his love,’ and be heard.
I stopped him after a while and sent him away. I sat with Gordon for another hour, silent sometimes, touching him, cupping my hand on his brow; talking about our days in Loomis after that. Then I took a taxi home. I telephoned Adrian and said there was no change.
The next day was the same: no change. People came to see Gordon – some who had helped him, or tried, with food and clothing and money; others who were simply curious. (Gordon was Wellington’s best-known street person.) Sheena Gourlay had a change of heart and dropped in, bringing the man called Angus from Fry-up House. I stayed out of the room, so I don’t know what they said. She told me when she left that Gordon’s rent was due and asked if she should keep his room.