Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories

by Joy Dettman

  The old man is propped high on pillows. His mud eyes see her but do not acknowledge her. A crumbling puppet-master, unwilling yet to release his hold on the family strings, he tugs on them now with the fragile power of age and infirmity.

  ‘Get me water.’ His voice is no longer the voice of a man. A toothless jackal, he yelps, whines his order, his morning breath fetid as a scavenger dog’s. Polly turns her head to escape it. The room stinks of him and his slow decay.

  ‘In one moment, Father. I’ll finish this row. Knit three, light blue, knit two.’ Each morning she sits by his bed after the district nurse has gone, her fine metal needles click-clicking as she counts away the days of her life, always knitting for children from another’s womb.

  She had loved, long ago, had thought to wed, but she’d put away her dreams when her brother Arthur died – died outside the hospital on the day her father had his first stroke. Dear Arthur, he’d been too young to go. Her father was unable to manage alone when he was released from hospital, so she’d moved home to look after him, just for a while – fifteen years ago. And it hadn’t been all bad. The house was handy to a shopping centre and she enjoyed shopping. And she had her garden, loved spending fine days in the garden. Not this month though. June had come in bitterly cold and grown even colder.

  ‘There is such a fog out there today, dear, but we’re nice and cosy in here, aren’t we?’ A three bar electric heater glows warmly from the corner. She can’t justify having two heaters burning, which is why she brings her knitting into this room.

  He whines again. He wants his water.

  ‘This is one of the more difficult rows of the pattern, dear. I can’t put it down midway through or I’ll lose my count. Let me finish this row then I’ll get you a drink. Knit four, dark blue, knit one – it’s quite a complicated pattern –’

  But the old coot is tired of waiting. He snatches at her knitting, tangling the wool around the bruised blue bunch of sinews that is his hand. Her blue stitches slide from the needle.

  ‘Oh, Father! Oh, look what you’ve done! It’s for little Pollyanna.’

  ‘Little Pollyanna,’ he yips. ‘What about me?’

  She is his last born, her mother’s daughter, and like her mother, timid, dutiful, obedient, compassionately tolerant of all. Never misses church on Sundays. All anger is repressed, all personal need buried beneath good works and godly thoughts, aware her reward will be in heaven, but her cheeks glow red and her eyes fill, spill. Blindly she gathers the wool and places it out of his reach before pouring water from the jug beside his bed. She lifts his head from the pillow and holds the glass while he gurgles a mouthful. It trickles down his chin while her own warm tears trickle down to compressed lips. She never weeps, or not in this room. A towel, kept handy for small emergencies, snatched, she wipes his chin, dabs at his throat and pyjama top.

  ‘Is that better, dear?’

  Honour thy mother and thy father, the bible says. Her mother died young, took to her bed one day and never got out; gave up, gave in. Her father now receives a double dose of Polly’s honour. And he doesn’t deserve it. He is not honourable. His eyes are malevolent pits. She knows he doesn’t want that water, but she offers it again. It barely wets his lips before he slaps at her hand, spilling water onto his pillow and sheet, knocking the glass to the floor.

  ‘Look what you’ve done, you clumsy bitch.’

  ‘You knocked my hand on purpose, Father. You did that on purpose.’

  ‘Get Herb. Get him over here now.’

  ‘I told you, Herb has to see his specialist this morning.’ She walks to the window, breathes deep, calming breaths. ‘And what a day for him to be out on the roads. I’ve never seen such a fog.’

  Then through the fog she sees those children still playing on the seesaw and the rhythm of squeaking wood on metal is like the old man’s wheezing lungs. It irritates her, as does the children’s constant bickering. She hunches and shrugs her shoulders, attempting to ease the ache in her neck. Too much knitting. She’s been locked inside for days watching him or the television and knitting, always knitting. Her arm is aching this morning. If only that fog would clear and the sun would come out, she could go for a walk in her garden, go to the supermarket.

  He whines at her. She glances at the bed, then back to the window. She has served this old master too long. She wants him gone, wants . . . wants something more than she has.

  ‘How much longer are we going to keep this up for?’ one of the children says.

  ‘Until one of us falls. That’s the rules.’

  ‘It’s a crazy game.’

  ‘Give up then.’

  Shouldn’t they be in school today? Polly thinks as she sits again, takes up her knitting and methodically begins picking up lost stitches. It’s too difficult. It’s all too difficult. Better to unravel a few rows. ‘Lord.’ Half of her morning’s work lost because of that selfish old man.

  He waits, watches, chomps on his gums. He will not be ignored. He made certain they didn’t ignore him when he was young. He whipped them into sitting up and taking notice. He’s lost his whip. He’s told her he wants Herb, and she’s not getting Herb. He had ten children; eight escaped him. Only two left to manipulate now.

  Through slitted eyes he watches his youngest remove her spectacles and polish them. He waits until she’s entangled in wool, her concentration on her knitting, then, with a huge effort of will, he hits her with his final weapon.

  ‘I’ve done it in my pants.’ His whine trembles with satisfaction.

  Polly looks up from her knitting. ‘The nursing sister took care of . . . of your needs this morning, dear. She told me.’

  ‘I said, I done it, and it’s your fault. Your rotten food’s gone right through me.’

  She sniffs, lifts a corner of his blanket and peels it back. ‘Oh, Father!’ She steps back, back. ‘You did that on purpose. You . . . you . . . you are an evil, dirty old man.’

  As she runs from the room the jackal laughs.

  The hands of the clock have turned. An hour has gone and Polly is dialling her brother’s mobile phone. Her skirt is wet, her feet are bare, her fine grey hair is in disarray.

  ‘Hello there.’ Herb’s voice comes on the line, the voice of sanity.

  ‘Herb. You have to help me.’

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Poll? I’ll be there directly. Just leaving his office now. Bad news from the x-ray. It looks like the other bugger is worse off than the original one. He says he’ll do them together when he can get me a bed.’

  ‘Herb –’

  ‘Is he dead?’ There is hope in her brother’s voice, but Polly kills that hope.

  ‘He soiled himself, Herb.’

  ‘Oh, Christ. Okay, I’m coming now. Let him sit in it until I get there, Poll.’

  ‘It’s too late for that. I brought the hose in and hosed him. I don’t know what got into me, Herb. It must have been temporary insanity. I’ll tell them I didn’t know what I was doing, except they’ll know I wasn’t insane because I turned off the electric heater first and put it outside the door – and I took off the new beanie I knitted him for his birthday too –’

  ‘You hosed him!’

  ‘Yes. And bring some grease with you, Herb. That seesaw in the park needs some grease put on it. It’s driving me mad this morning.’

  ‘You said you hosed him?’

  ‘He deserved it, Herb. He’s a dirty, wicked old man –’

  ‘So you cleaned him up, Poll? What’s he doing?’

  ‘Nothing. He kept asking for water, Herb, and he pulled all my stitches off . . . so . . . so I gave him water. I stood at the door and kept on giving it to him too, shooting that hose at him like it was napalm and he was the enemy. I was burning him, burning him and loving it –’

  ‘Hold on to yourself there, girl. I’m in the car now and I’ll have to hang up or the coppers will get me – if they can see any bloody thing through this pea-souper. It’s a white-out. I can’t even see the white lines. Are you all right
for me to hang up?’

  Polly nods, places the phone down then walks to the back door where she peers out at a paling fence separating her father’s land from the park. Her long distance vision is poor without her spectacles. She has left them . . . somewhere. For minutes she stands on the doorstep, watching the two children on the seesaw.

  One is dark, the other fair. They look familiar. Perhaps she has seen them at church. She calls to them, but they ignore her. Slowly she returns to her father’s room where she wipes haphazardly at the floor, wipes at her father with the same towel, places the washcloth strategically then wipes at the wall while the ceiling rains its last drips onto her hair.

  Herb Flinders is the family harbinger of death. He was twenty-five when his mother died. He stood in a public telephone booth at the post office, sniffing back tears and feeding in wet pennies while the operator connected him to family members. Over the past forty-five years Herb has passed on the news of his brother Arthur’s death, of brother Norm’s, of Dave’s, of two sisters’ untimely deaths. He’s made calls for lost nephews, lost brothers-in-law then, more recently, he told of his wife’s death.

  He is only sixty-nine, but moves like a man of eighty. His hips have had it. Four years ago when he retired, he was a vital man. Now he’s an old age pensioner, too old to be bound to a father who should have died years ago.

  Herb sighs, turns on his headlights. They hit a white glare and bounce back. He’s driving blind, but driving a modern car, bought new when he retired, so he’d be eligible for the pension. Every time he drives it, it reminds him of all the places he and his wife had planned to go. She got cancer, then his hips started eroding. So much for dreams.

  He squints through the fog and thinks of a life free of filial duty, thinks too of his share of the old man’s estate. The house is old, but it’s in South Melbourne where housing prices have skyrocketed. Given its position and the size of the land, it could go for close on a million – maybe more than a million. Split amongst five, a million dollars still goes a long way. But if they split it the way Moni is planning to split it, that could make him filthy rich – and bugger his old age pension.

  A small black book he keeps in his glove box is well worn; each of his siblings’ names and numbers are written there, though five have been blacked out – and poor old Robert’s is soon to be blacked out. A threadbare gold ribbon marks Moni’s details. He always calls Moni first. She’s the family solicitor, the family realist, ten years his junior, so still working, though she doesn’t need to work. Conversations with Moni invariably open with two fast questions: ‘Is he dead?’ and ‘Did you get the old bugger to sign that will?’

  That will is of her making. She wrote it two years ago, apportioning their father’s chattels as she thought fit – only after they found his current will and learned he’d left his all to the RSL. Moni typed it up, had it witnessed by a couple of her colleagues, then posted it up for Herb, told him to get his father to sign it. It’s been sitting in the glove box with his black book since, worthless without that signature, but the old bugger would refuse to sign, so Herb hasn’t offered it for signing. But for the past year he has been practising his father’s signature, filling pages with it, then burning them. Maybe it’s time. He and Polly need that money. Moni doesn’t want it, and the other buggers don’t deserve it. They never come near the old coot, haven’t in fifteen years.

  Herb parks his car in the drive, sits a while, then takes a pen from his pocket, the will from his glove box, and reads it one last time. A fifth of the estate is to be split between the other living siblings, just so they won’t challenge the will, Moni said, but the rests gets chopped right down the middle, half for him and half for Polly, for their loving care and companionship during my latter years. The old bugger wouldn’t have chosen those words, but they were true enough.

  ‘Time it was signed,’ he mutters, and he does it. It’s a beauty too, a drunken spider’s final stagger across the page. No one is going to question that signature, not even Polly. He seals it, places it into the envelope, pops it into his breast pocket as he eases his aching hips from the seat, gets his feet on the ground, reaches for his walking stick and starts towards the house.

  Polly doesn’t hear Herb’s key in the front door, doesn’t hear his rubber soles on the carpeted floor or the tap-tap of his walking stick. Her knitting needles are clicking fast, making up lost ground. Her elbow lifts, releasing the pale blue wool from its cache as he places a hand on her shoulder.

  Like a startled cat, she springs to her feet. ‘He’s still breathing,’ she says. ‘How can he still be breathing, Herb?’

  Herb looks down at the naked form of his father, crucified on his bare vinyl covered mattress, a wet face washer neatly covering his genitals, his hair a wet grey stubble left clinging to dead clay a season too long, his lips a mottled purple slash. They match his eye sockets, the right eye an accusing slit, the left eye closed.

  ‘Bloody cold in here,’ Herb says.

  ‘I thought it would be dangerous to bring the heater back in.’

  ‘Shit, yes!’ Herb says. ‘What the bloody hell did you think you were doing, Poll! What possessed you to go out there and get that hose?’

  ‘He soiled himself . . . ’

  The hose is coiled like a green snake across the floor, its spray-gun head poised to strike. Herb looks at it, considers it for a moment before hooking it up with his walking stick. The striking head in his hand, he coils the hose as he follows it down the passage and out through the back door to the fence, where he drops it beside the tap.

  On his return, he looks at his shoes and at the water oozing from the carpet beneath his shoes. He looks up at the dripping walls.

  ‘You made a bloody mess of this room, girl.’

  She’s not listening. Her face is turned to the window. ‘I’ll hose them next if they don’t go home. Listen to them.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Those children. They’ve been arguing all morning.’

  He listens, shakes his head. ‘I can’t hear anyone. I’m getting as deaf as a post lately. I’ll be forking out for a hearing-aid next. Have you called the ambulance?’

  ‘They’ll only . . . only do something to save him. And I can’t bring them in here.’

  ‘What do you suggest we do with him?’

  ‘He’s going blue, isn’t he?’

  ‘He doesn’t look too healthy, girl.’ He looks closely at his father’s slitted eye, lifts the left lid, peers into it, shrugs, stands fondling the address book in his pocket. ‘At least while he’s alive you’ve got your house. You’ve got to consider that.’

  ‘They won’t sell it, will they, Herb? They won’t make me move out?’

  She doesn’t know about his and Moni’s plan because she’s too honest for her own good. He needs his share of the estate to pay for two hip replacements. He’s been waiting for two years to get one of them done. He knows he shouldn’t have let his hospital insurance lapse when he and his wife went on the pension, knows he shouldn’t have bought his new car either, but this country owed him something, didn’t it? He’s worked his guts out, paid his taxes since he left school at fourteen. Wasn’t it about time the government started giving back something to the workers instead of handing it all out to a mob of bludgers?

  He licks his lips, steps back, looks at his sister, wondering who she sees as being the greatest threat to her claim on the family home. His hand rises, wipes his own guilty need from his lips, gathers it into his hand to seal into a tight fist.

  ‘Where would they expect me to live, Herb?’

  ‘I can’t rightly say, Poll, can’t speak for them. You being the youngest, and likely to outlive the lot of us. With you staying on in the house, no one is going to get a penny out of the estate. He’s got no money.’

  ‘They got away. They had their families. They owe me something for the years I’ve looked after him.’

  ‘Me and Moni agree with you there, girl. We’ll make sure you’re all righ
t.’

  ‘You won’t let them put me out on the street?’

  ‘If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a dozen times, you can move in with me – if we have to sell the house. Now shut up about it, Poll, and call the ambulance over here or by Christ, you’re not going to have to worry about where you spend your future. You can’t go around drowning old buggers in their beds, even if they do deserve it. I dunno how we’re going to explain this to them.’

  ‘I sopped up a bit of water from the carpet. I stopped it getting into the passage. Which reminds me. The washing will be ready to go in the dryer.’

  ‘It’ll take a month of Sundays to dry this out. You’d better bring in some more towels and see if we can soak up some of it. Bring a dry mop too and I’ll dry that ceiling off a bit.’

  She hurries off to do his bidding while he walks the room, checks the passage. Not much has seeped out. His shoes squelch back to the bed. ‘Bring a bucket too, Poll, and some pyjamas and socks for him. I don’t know about him going blue, but his feet are going yellow.’

  She transfers washing to the dryer, puts in another load and returns with towels and bucket, mop and pyjamas. Herb rolls his father onto a dry towel while Polly spreads the others on the carpet, walks them into the ooze, counts, knits.

  ‘Put that down, Poll,’ Herb says, pulling hand-knitted socks over clay feet.

  ‘I had to unpick five rows. He pulled all the stitches off. Don’t talk to me for a minute, Herb, I have to count while I do it. Purl two, light blue, purl three, dark. Do you think you should shave him? He’d look better if you shaved him. Medium blue, purl five, dark blue, purl three, light blue two. It might be better if you drove him to the hospital while I mop up, get some heaters in here. I could bring in the fan heater from the kitchen.’

  Herb shaves his father, clothes him, rolls him into a blanket, lifts him into the wheelchair and Polly wheels him out to the car where together they heave and haul him in, settle him into the back seat, buckle him in.