The Naked Drinking Club

by Rhona Cameron

  ‘We’re back!’ Hank opened the fly screen with wind chimes dangling above it. He took my rucksack, while I went ahead of him dragging my folder, which was extra heavy with the double-ups. I left my folder in the hall and followed Hank through to a room.

  ‘Will this be safe here?’ I asked, concerned that there was only an unlocked fly screen between the street and my only source of income and ticket to spy on my mother.

  ‘You’re not in Sydney now, love. Of course it’s safe.’

  Something good was cooking: a warm spicy coconut aroma drifted through from another room.

  I looked around. He led me to the kitchen and we pulled chairs up to a table and sat down. The house was old and plain-looking, cool and dark – which I liked – and the furniture was heavy, and dark-stained wood. There were lace doilies on the tables with ornaments on them; the ornaments were all stones, or marble, shells and bits of driftwood. There were pieces of material hanging on various parts of the wall with Asian writing on it. He saw me looking.

  ‘A lot of the furniture’s my mum’s. She lived with me most of my life until she died two years ago this December.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be, she had a fine old time. She was OK; just old, that’s all. I could sure do with changing the place around. It’s a bit dusty, shall we say?’

  ‘Wasn’t Slim Dusty a country music star?’

  ‘Very good. You like country?’

  ‘No, not really, bit of Patsy Cline of course, but not a huge fan in general. But we were near Tamworth a few days ago, and there were signs on the road for some of the stuff going on.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, that’ll be right.’

  ‘There was one for the Slim Dusty museum.’

  ‘Well, as you can tell, I’m a big country fan.’ He pointed to his clothes. ‘Now, just you sit down and relax. Can I fix you something? Coke, beer, cup of tea?’

  I struggled with my decision; it was a hard one. My kidneys ached and I still felt thirsty and bloated, but the polite chat was killing me, and I was finding it hard keeping my eyes open.

  ‘I’ll have a Coke please. Cold, if you’ve got it.’ I’d wait to drink until I’d eaten, that would be my new rule for my stay here.

  ‘Sure thing, let me get that for you, and I’m going to find some plasters and stuff as well, OK?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Hank, although Australian, spoke in a bit of a fake Memphis drawl, which was so corny I was amazed that he didn’t notice it. He opened a cold bottle from the fridge and put it down beside me, and began rooting around in the drawer.

  ‘Excuse me.’ He left the room and began shouting for someone. ‘Pat! Pat, love, you in?’

  He came back into the room muttering to himself. I wondered where I would be sleeping, longing for dinner and answers about my mother and an early night. Then in the morning I could start what I came here to do.

  A bell sounded from the oven, and a small smiley woman with a round face and straight black hair burst in through the back door, saying, ‘Oh my goodness, you are here.’

  Pat was Chinese or Mexican, I couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Hi there, I’m Kerry.’

  ‘Kerry, this is Pattana.’ We shook hands.

  ‘Nice to meet you. Sorry, I was outside picking some coriander but, my goodness, what has happened with your face?’ She dusted her hands on her apron.

  ‘Pattana, we need to sort it out, it looks very red,’ said Hank, putting on some spectacles and going back to the drawer.

  She looked horrified.

  ‘White-water rafting,’ I said sheepishly.

  She gasped.

  ‘Stupid, I know,’ I said, shrugging my shoulders.

  ‘Let me take a look.’

  ‘Yes, Pattana used to be a nurse back home in Thailand. I’m looking for the plasters, sweetheart.’

  ‘Here, I get them.’ Pattana went to a different part of the kitchen and brought out a small red box. ‘My goodness, such a mess.’ She was shocked but laughed and darted around. I liked her, she seemed like fun, and they were an odd couple.

  After Pattana disinfected my wounds, she put some more micropore stitches above my eye and cleaned the cut to my mouth with a cotton bud. We had dinner, which was the most fantastic meal I’d ever eaten in my life. The fish was huge and white and lay on my plate covered in a tasty chilli and coconut sauce, with carrot and coriander salad. I finished well before Hank and Pat, and perked up immediately.

  ‘Are you sure you won’t have a glass of red, Kerry? Brown Brothers is a good wine, you know.’

  ‘I will now I’ve eaten, thanks, but only a small one, please.’

  Pattana laughed.

  After dinner she tidied around us and I thanked her for her excellent cooking.

  Hank kissed her on the head and asked if she wouldn’t mind seeing to things herself while we ‘got down to the nitty gritty’.

  I was loosening up already, and feeling happy and appreciative for the special care lavished on me.

  ‘OK, Hank, this is lovely but I really want to know stuff now.’

  ‘I’ll get my file,’ he said, putting his reading glasses back on from the chain round his neck.

  ‘File?’

  ‘Hank likes to be organised about everything,’ said Pattana, laughing away again to herself.

  Hank came back to the table with an orange folder and began examining his notes. ‘Now listen, Kerry.’ He shut the folder and pulled his glasses down onto his nose, looking over at me.

  ‘Hank, this is driving me mad, what do you know?’ I leant forward anxiously, drinking from my glass. The wine was the smoothest I had ever drunk, slipping down effortlessly, burning my stomach slightly with the chillies.

  ‘This isn’t all your stuff, by the way. I just like to keep notes so I remember things, that’s all. I didn’t want to miss anything, you understand?’

  ‘Yes, but please tell me, this is killing me. Have you spoken to my mother or not?’

  ‘I’ve spoken over the telephone with your mum’s sister, your auntie.’ He read off the file again.

  ‘Fuck!’ I quickly turned to Pattana, embarrassed. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘That’s OK.’ Pattana tutted in the background.

  ‘A woman going by the name of Mary spoke to me and from what I can gather she’s your mum’s oldest sister, and she’s married.’

  ‘And is my mum here?’

  Hank stared at me. ‘Well.’

  ‘Hank, don’t be slow with her, she needs to know,’ chided Pattana.

  ‘Pat, I’m not playing around, I just don’t want her to get hurt. Kerry, your mum is very resistant, she’s fearful of meeting you. It’s traumatic, you understand that?’

  ‘What!’ I shouted, ecstatic that I was now talking to the first person that had ever spoken to my mum, or at least a blood relative of hers.

  ‘This Mary woman said that your mum has been terrified of this happening since the day she gave you away, worried that you might just show up.’ Hank took his glasses on and off to emphasise points, but I knew it was nerves because he was unsure of how I would take all this. I didn’t quite know how I felt about it, but I would settle for anything at this point, even just an acknowledgement that I did have a person somewhere who gave birth to me, that some part of me looked like.

  ‘Did you tell them I was here?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. In fact, they asked that. I told them you were thinking of coming over, but so far were just trying different means of reaching them, or finding out something, and I was just someone you came across when you thought you’d try radio as a way of reaching people. For all they know, you are in still in England.’ Hank’s glasses were off for the last part. Pattana cocked her head to the side in sympathy.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Positive. I didn’t want to frighten them off, you see. I wanted to get as much information as possible.’ He stopped and read the wistful look on my face, then smiled. ‘That’s it, that’s all we know for n
ow.’

  I could have cried, but swallowed it and got back to my questions. ‘Is Mary her real name, I wonder? What about her second name?’

  ‘Well, I’m presuming she wouldn’t lie about a first name and she didn’t tell me her second name.’ He shrugged.

  ‘OK.’ I ran my hand through my hair, trying to think of what to make of everything and what plan of action to take. I needed one of those plastic boards on the wall with bits of card pinned to it that detectives use on TV.

  ‘Got some other news that might disappoint you, I’m afraid, love.’

  I braced myself for something along the lines of, she’s going back to the UK this week.

  ‘Your mother didn’t marry the man you thought she did, the Duffy fella.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Not according to Mary.’

  ‘Well, how do you know she isn’t double-bluffing?’ It seemed to me that Hank was a pushover with this Mary woman.

  ‘Well, I don’t, but I just got the feeling that she was telling the truth. She said your mum did marry a military man, but not by the name of Duffy.’

  I felt drained. This meant my search would be much harder, and completely ruled out the back-up plan of search by surname – if fate didn’t do its magic this time, of course.

  ‘Perhaps who ever told you it was Duffy was wrong; it could have just been a mistake on their part.’ Hank smiled kindly in an attempt to console me. I thought back to the old lady on the doorstep in Newcastle, who gave me the information; at the time, she seemed reliable. Now, however, that seemed doubtful and I recast her in my mind as a confused old woman who’d sent me off on the wrong track with her muddled memory.

  ‘Was the man my mum married Australian, even?’ I was clutching at straws.

  ‘I honestly don’t know, love.’ He sipped his wine. ‘Like I said, she was resistant and kinda well’ he moved his hand around ‘worked up, you know?’

  This was fairly bad news, and threw a spanner in the works, but I wasn’t going to be put off that easily.

  ‘Phone book.’ I clicked my fingers. ‘I should still check the Duffys out up here, in case she was lying.’

  ‘Of course. It’s the first thing I did. You’re welcome to take a look yourself.’ He pointed through to the hall. ‘Only three in this area funnily enough, and a couple of pages for the rest of Brisbane.’

  I looked at him quizzically.

  ‘I called a couple but none of them knew what I was talking about. That means nothing because a hell of a lot of people are ex-directory.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Pattana nodded.

  ‘They could be lying as well.’ I laughed a little, feeling that the obvious was being overlooked.

  ‘Yes, they could, but I don’t think so. One was an old lady who’d never been married, and the other two I could just tell were being honest.’

  ‘OK, tell me the whole thing, please, from the start. About Mary coming to see you and everything she said.’

  ‘Well, I got a call from the station that evening. You see, I do pre-records sometimes, so when the call about you went out, I was at home, yeah?’

  I nodded.

  ‘They said there were some people anxious to meet up with me, so I went in straight away and there they were. Almost as soon as I arrived, the eldest one, this Mary, asked me – quite aggressively, I have to say – how I knew about the baby.’

  ‘The baby?’ It was strange to hear me referred to as ‘the baby’, but they hadn’t been living with me all these years; to them I was still the baby, I suppose. ‘How many people came to see you that day?’ Hank was frustrating me now, leaving little bits of information out that I could use as a lead in this case.

  ‘Her husband, James, who was outside in the car.’ He sipped on his wine again, which annoyed me this time.

  ‘Sorry, what? Whose husband?’ I moved my glass away and leant in.

  ‘Mary’s. She referred to the man in the car outside as James, her husband.’

  ‘OK, Hank, don’t miss out any information whatsoever when you’re telling me this, please.’ I became overanimated. ‘I need to know every little detail. Who was there? The names. The vehicle registration. That kind of thing.’

  ‘Sorry, love, but I think getting the plates is expecting a bit much, don’t you?’ He drank from his wine, went red-faced and waited for an answer.

  I shrugged, because I didn’t think it was too much to take down the car plates. But then, I had tunnel vision now, and all I could see was my faceless mother standing at the end of it. ‘What did the car look like, then?’

  ‘Uhm.’ Hank pressed the palm of his hand to his head. ‘White. A white station wagon of some kind, I think.’

  ‘OK, OK. Who was there again?’ I calmed down slightly.

  ‘This Mary.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ I nodded.

  ‘James in the car, and a woman with Mary whom she referred to as a family friend.’

  I looked questioning again. ‘Family friend! That could have been her.’

  ‘No way! I’m telling you, they were shit scared. There’s no way your mum would just show up. They want to protect her.’

  I felt sad again for a brief moment at the thought of my mother protecting herself from me, but consoled myself with the belief that when she met me, she would regret that feeling, and realise it was just fear of opening up the pain from her difficult past.

  ‘What exactly did you say on air about me?’ I took a drink of wine and sat back a bit.

  ‘I told them I was passing on a message from a Joanna Thomson, who was looking for a Madeline Thomson, who married John Duffy in 1966, whom she believed was living somewhere in Australia, possibly Sydney, or Brisbane, or Melbourne even, and that if anyone knew anything, would they leave a message with the show.’ He finished reading from the file. ‘But I didn’t use any surnames, because I felt that would be a little too intrusive, you know?’

  Pattana and I both nodded.

  ‘So why did they come forward if they didn’t want to know me?’ I didn’t miss a trick.

  ‘Perhaps they thought I might say more – like, mention your mother’s name, which I would never have done, I have to say, because I don’t think it’s right. And anyhow you hadn’t officially told me you were looking for your mother, even though I sensed as much.’

  ‘Then what?’ I got up and started walking round the table, taking my wine with me.

  ‘Poor girl, look at her, Hank,’ said Pattana, hands covered in soapy water, straining round every so often to see how I was taking things.

  I felt awkward whenever Pattana showed concern. ‘I’m all right, thanks, just excited. This is massive, you know? Just massive!’

  ‘Tell her what happened after that, Hank.’ Pattana looked solemn.

  ‘Well, I thought that was the end of it until I got hold of you. But two days later, there was a knock at the door here and this Mary was there, looking very angry. She was with a tall quiet woman and they walked in, and this Mary lady started having a go at me. What business is it of mine? How I was an interfering busybody, how I should back off, and all that sort of stuff. I looked out and there was a bloke sitting in the car, maybe the husband or a brother I thought, I didn’t get a look at him.’

  ‘Jesus, Hank, why didn’t you call me straight away? And how did they know where you lived, and who was the other woman with her? I bet it was her. Fuck, Hank!’ I definitely needed the board now; there were too many characters involved to keep track of.

  ‘Listen, love.’ He took his glasses off and folded them away. ‘I had nothing but your protection in mind during all of this. I felt from talking to you on the phone that you could easily be hurt by this, so I wanted to take it easy until I knew more about the situation. I felt a duty, can you understand that?’

  At this point I felt that Hank was mistaking me for a fucking moron.

  ‘What about the other woman, Hank?’ I wanted to get back to more important matters.

  ‘For the last time, love,’ h
e sighed. But it was too important for me to feel guilty about asking him to go over the details again.

  ‘I doubt if the woman with Mary was your mother, love, given the stink they kicked up about it all. I would have thought that she would have been kept well away. It’s like how I felt about you, I wanted to protect you from it – they would have felt extremely protective over your mother.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I don’t want to be protected from the truth, thank you.’ I felt slightly angry now, and was growing impatient.

  ‘Unfortunately, the truth is often the very thing that people need protecting from the most.’ Hank looked sad, glancing over his shoulder at Pattana.

  ‘How did they know where you lived, Hank?’ I got back to matters practical.

  ‘It’s not hard to track me down, love. I’m fairly well known around here.’ He smiled.

  ‘I wonder if they live in Brisbane?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know for sure but I’d say they did, based on the fact that they were at the station a few hours after I aired. I would say it’s highly likely.’

  ‘How come the woman gave you her name at all if they were so scared of everything?’

  ‘Just politeness. People here are nice people. Besides, it was just a first name, and I said I don’t talk to people and answer questions if I don’t know who they are. That’s when she introduced herself as Mary. I asked if she was a relative and she said she was, but it was none of my business and that she certainly wasn’t the mother in question. I looked at the woman with her and she reassured me that she was a family friend.’

  ‘And that was it?’

  ‘You see what I mean, kid? I don’t want you getting your hopes up, all this might lead you nowhere.’

  ‘My hopes aren’t down, if that’s what you mean. An hour ago I knew nothing – now I know they are real, that she exists, that I was made by someone still living. Fuck, it’s brilliant. Sorry.’ Suddenly I was drinking from a glass that was half full for the first time.