Pool

by Justin D'Ath

  ‘Could someone get me a towel?’

  The waitress darted off and returned with a blue hand towel. Wolfgang wiped his hands, then opened the first aid box. Bingo! Clipped to the underside of the lid was a pair of needle-nosed tweezers. Lifting Campbell’s paw again, Wolfgang gripped the sliver of glass with the point of the tweezers, took a deep breath, and tugged.

  ‘There’s the culprit,’ he said, holding up the tweezers to his audience like a vet on a television show. Perhaps he should become a vet!

  There was a small bottle of disinfectant in the box. Wolfgang wet a cotton ball liberally with the pungent yellow liquid, then carefully swabbed the wound. Campbell’s paw was still bleeding, though more slowly now. Wolfgang asked the waitress to help him. He pressed another cotton ball into the gap between the injured pad and its neighbour, then he directed the waitress to hold the paw steady while he applied two strips of plaster to hold the cotton wool in place.

  ‘All fixed,’ he said.

  The boys’ father started the applause. It was taken up by his wife and their two sons, then the whole restaurant was clapping.

  And Audrey kissed him. In front of everybody. ‘My hero,’ she whispered.

  38

  Campbell couldn’t walk all the way home so Audrey phoned her parents. Keith agreed to come and collect them in the car. Wolfgang had his bike, but he waited with Audrey and her dog on the steps outside the restaurant.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ll be going out tonight?’ he said.

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘I can come with you, if you like.’

  Audrey leaned sideways and rested her head on his shoulder. ‘You’ve very sweet. But you need your beauty sleep, Wolfgang.’

  It would take more than sleep to fix up the way he looked. ‘I could sleep tomorrow morning,’ he said. ‘I don’t start at the pool till eleven. So if I went to bed at, say, three a.m., I’d still get six or seven hours sleep.’

  ‘I can’t ask you to do that.’

  ‘I want to do it. Until Campbell’s better, I can be your guide man.’

  ‘I don’t need a guide,’ Audrey said. ‘I know my way around this town probably better than you do. How does the saying go? With my eyes closed.’

  ‘You don’t seriously mean you’d go out without Campbell?’

  ‘Why not? I’m a big girl now.’

  ‘You’d get lost!’

  ‘Haven’t you been listening? I know my way around! Do you think Campbell can read street signs? I’m the one who knows where we’re going. All I need is my cane.’

  Wolfgang thought of the four hundred and fifty dollars a week her father was paying him to look after her. ‘It’s not safe to be out on your own at night.’

  ‘I’m not your responsibility, Wolfgang,’ she said. ‘It’s my problem, okay?’

  ‘Does it have to be a problem?’ he asked. ‘I mean, can’t you change? Can’t you try sleeping at night? At least until Campbell’s better?’

  ‘My parents used to force me to sleep regular hours but it never worked. I’d wake up ten, twenty, fifty times a night, and then I’d be half asleep all the next day.’

  ‘Did you ever try sleeping pills?’

  Audrey pulled away from him. ‘I told you – it’s not a sleeping disorder, okay? It’s just how I am. My body clock’s different from everybody else’s, and there’s nothing you, my parents or any doctor or shrink or freaking hypnotist can do about it.’

  39

  If you can’t beat them, join them. The next day Wolfgang went to see Mrs Lonsdale in her office and asked if he could work just afternoons for the next week.

  His boss looked stern. ‘I’ve already drawn up the roster, Wolfgang.’

  ‘I know, and I’m sorry. It’s my dad,’ he said. ‘He hasn’t been very well lately and Mum wants me to be around in the mornings when she’s not home.’

  More lies.

  I’m sorry, God, it’s for a good cause, thought Wolfgang. And you’re the one that made her blind in the first place.

  ‘What are you doing tonight?’ he asked Audrey as she and her mother were leaving the pool that afternoon. Bernadette had come to collect her daughter half an hour earlier than Audrey normally left when she had Campbell with her.

  ‘Nothing much,’ Audrey said. She freed herself from her mother’s arm and tapped her way over to the ticket window using her cane. ‘You didn’t come and talk to me today.’

  He lowered his voice. ‘I didn’t want to wake you.’

  ‘Don’t be smart.’

  ‘I wasn’t. I thought you wouldn’t want to be disturbed.’

  ‘Wolfgang,’ Audrey said, ‘you could never disturb me.’

  He resisted the impulse to reach through the window and touch her. ‘So, what about tonight?’ he asked.

  ‘Do you want to come over? We could ... I don’t know, listen to music or something.’

  ‘Or go for a walk.’

  Audrey smiled. ‘Okay. I’ll see you later.’

  She made her way back to her mother. The two of them talked softly for a few moments, then Audrey turned back around.

  ‘Would you like to come for dinner?’ she asked.

  40

  Wolfgang asked Michael to fill in for him. At twenty minutes to five he was riding out of the car park on his bike. He rode quickly, hoping to catch Dr Karalis before he left work. The scientist hadn’t been in his office when Wolfgang had phoned him before leaving home that morning, and they weren’t allowed to make long-distance calls from the pool. He arrived home in near record time and went straight to the phone. No answer. Wolfgang slammed the receiver down and went looking for his mother.

  ‘Any calls for me today?’

  ‘No, dear. You could ask your father.’

  What was the use? In any case, Dr Karalis knew Wolfgang’s work number – he could have phoned him at the pool had he wanted to get in touch. Perhaps the wing hadn’t arrived. Wolfgang went to his room and checked his emails, but there was nothing from the scientist. He was tempted to tap out a message about the second – complete – black butterfly, but he stopped himself and went off-line. He wanted to hear Dr Karalis’s reaction when he received the news. He wanted to share his discovery with a real person, not with a computer screen.

  Wolfgang slid his chair over to the wardrobe and carefully lifted down the suitcase from on top where his father, too frail to climb on chairs, would never be able to reach it. Placing the suitcase flat on his bed, he undid the clasps and lifted out the setting-tray with its extraordinary black-winged specimen. His father might have been senile, but he was still an artist when it came to setting butterflies. Admiring his beautiful work, Wolfgang was struck by an aching sense of what might have been.

  ‘Aw, Dad,’ he whispered. ‘I wish you knew what you found.’

  41

  Wolfgang told his mother he wasn’t working in the morning and asked her not to wake him.

  ‘I might be late home,’ he said on his way out the door. But he didn’t say how late. He wasn’t supposed to stay out after eleven but his parents had never enforced the curfew. They went to bed at nine-thirty. It was one of the advantages of having elderly parents – as long as Wolfgang was quiet, they didn’t know what time he got in.

  He rode to Audrey’s, taking his time because he didn’t want to work up a sweat. It was a hot evening and he’d showered and put on a clean T-shirt and jeans before leaving. He had even shaved – in case Audrey wanted to kiss him again. My hero.

  Bernadette answered the door. ‘Hullo Wolfgang,’ she greeted him with a smile. ‘Audrey’s up in her room. She shouldn’t be long.’

  She led him out to the back patio where Keith was lighting a big gas barbecue. Keith wore an apron with Boss Chef printed on it over a white T-shirt and a pair of shorts that showed his pale, ginger-haired legs. He lifted a glass of red wine in a toast towards Wolfgang.

  ‘If it isn’t Doctor Doolittle! Would you like a beer, son?’

  ‘Actually, a glass of red m
ight be nice,’ Wolfgang said recklessly.

  Further along the patio was a table set for four. Keith collected one of the wineglasses and filled it from a bottle sitting on the railing next to the barbecue. ‘Good work yesterday, son,’ he said, handing Wolfgang his wine. ‘You’re proving to be quite an asset to this family.’

  Wolfgang tried not to blush. ‘It wasn’t anything, really. All I did was pull a bit of glass out – anyone could have done it. How is Campbell, anyway?’

  ‘The vet said he’s going to be fine. Bernadette took him in this morning, just to be on the safe side. I hope you don’t mind?’

  ‘Why would I mind? Like I said to Audrey, all I’ve done so far is a bit of theory.’

  Keith tipped a few drops of wine onto the hotplate and watched them jump and sizzle. ‘As it turned out, there was another splinter right up inside the foot. He had to operate to get it out.’

  ‘I’m th-thorry,’ Wolfgang stammered. ‘There was tho much blood ...’

  ‘Not your fault, son, not your fault at all.’ Keith clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Our vet said to compliment you on your good work. Now, how do you like your steak?’

  ‘Well-done.’

  Keith lifted a tray of meat from a shelf at the end of the barbecue and used a pair of tongs to lay four large steaks on the hotplate. There was a hiss of escaping juices and a cloud of steam. Wolfgang sipped his wine – it tasted horrible – and tried not to dwell on his stuff-up with Campbell’s paw. There had been a lot of blood. Even a real first year veterinary student might have missed the second glass splinter.

  Time to change the subject. ‘Has Audrey always been blind?’

  ‘She wasn’t born that way,’ said her father. ‘There was an accident when she was little.’

  ‘When she nearly drowned?’

  ‘You’ve heard about it, then. She was in a coma for two years. When she woke up, she could no longer see.’

  ‘It must have been awful for her, waking up blind.’

  ‘Do you want to know the worst thing?’ Keith said. ‘She didn’t know us. Here was this three-year-old kid who didn’t know her own parents.’

  Wolfgang shrugged. ‘Well, she was blind.’

  ‘Blind, but not deaf.’ Keith used the tongs to lift the corner of one of the steaks. ‘She could hear us perfectly well. But when we told her who we were,’ he said, his voice edged with bitterness, ‘Audrey went hysterical and had to be sedated. How did you say you like your steak?’

  ‘Well-done. Could she understand you?’ asked Wolfgang.

  ‘Of course she could.’

  ‘But if she was only, like, one year old when she went into the coma, she can’t have had much of a grasp of English.’

  ‘That was the surprising thing,’ said Keith. ‘She woke up talking nineteen to the dozen. Apparently she picked it up while she was non compos mentis. Bernadette and a couple of the old biddies from church spent hours at her bedside every day and they never stopped nattering away to her and reading her kids’ books, even though there was no sign she could hear them. Lucky they did, though – the doctors say that might have been what brought her back in the end.’

  ‘That’s incredible.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what’s more incredible,’ Keith said, ‘the mouth on her when she came to!’

  Wolfgang was puzzled. ‘What about her mouth, Mr Babacan?’

  ‘She could swear like a trooper. You’ve never heard anything like it!’ Keith’s eyes were shiny in the last of the daylight. ‘None of the good ladies would take credit for that, though, as you can well imagine.’

  ‘So where did she pick it up from?’ Wolfgang asked.

  ‘From the orderlies or the cleaners – who knows.’ Keith picked up his glass and drained it. He laughed, though not his usual hearty laugh. ‘For a while there,’ he said, rubbing his red fleshy nose with the back of one fist. ‘For a while I thought we might have to engage the services of an exorcist.’

  42

  ‘Where shall we go?’ Wolfgang asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Audrey said, clutching his elbow as he led her down the lamplit driveway from her house. ‘I just feel like walking.’

  ‘Me too. I ate way too much. I should have stopped when your mum brought out the trifle.’

  ‘She would have been offended. She made it specially for you.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘Do you think we eat like that every night, Wolfgang? We’d all be built like brick shithouses.’

  He thought of Keith’s story about her foul mouth as a child. There were so many questions he wanted to ask her. She pinched the inside of his elbow.

  ‘Ouch! What was that for?’

  ‘You missed your opportunity, buster.’

  ‘What opportunity?’

  ‘To tell me I’m not built like a brick shithouse!’

  ‘You’re not built like a brick shithouse.’

  ‘Too late.’ Audrey let out a big sigh. ‘Am I disgusting, Wolfgang?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I know I’m fat.’

  ‘Crap. You’re just right.’

  ‘My doctor said I’m overweight.’

  ‘Your doctor must be blind.’

  Audrey stopped abruptly and pulled him around to face her. Standing in the deep shadow of the big elm trailing over the Babacans’ front fence, Wolfgang cursed himself for once again allowing his mouth to run ahead of his brain. Your doctor must be blind. Aaaaaargh!

  Audrey slid her hand down his arm until she found his hand, then twined their fingers together. ‘Kiss me, you fool!’

  She tasted of cigarettes but Wolfgang didn’t mind. He was still finding it difficult to believe that he had a girlfriend. The difference in their ages didn’t matter. He would teach her to love him.

  ‘Aftershave,’ Audrey said when they separated.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re wearing aftershave.’

  ‘It’s shaving foam.’

  She put her face close to his and sniffed. ‘Whatever it is, I like it. It smells like you.’

  It smelled like his father, whose shaving foam he’d borrowed. Like father, like son. Wolfgang gave an involuntary shiver. ‘Well, let’s not stand round here all night,’ he said.

  Audrey threaded her hand back through his elbow. ‘Lead on, Mulqueen.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘We’ve done this conversation already,’ she said. ‘Surprise me.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Wolfgang, making a decision. He broke into a brisk walk.

  Five minutes later Audrey pulled him to a stop. ‘Hang on. Where are you taking me?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to the cemetery,’ she said.

  They had stopped thirty metres short of the main gates. How did she know that’s where they were? When she’d told him she could find her way around town with her eyes closed, Wolfgang had thought she was joking.

  ‘I thought you liked going to the cemetery.’

  ‘Don’t be boring, Wolfgang. I feel like doing something exciting tonight. Have you got any money on you? We could go to a pub or somewhere.’

  Luckily he didn’t have any money. ‘Wasn’t the object of the exercise to walk off our dinner?’

  ‘You’re right,’ she agreed. ‘Let’s just walk and see where it takes us.’

  Their walk took them right through the centre of town, quiet on a Monday night, past the pool and along Millar Street until they reached the botanical gardens.

  ‘Let’s go in,’ Audrey said. She squeezed his arm. ‘We can go for a paddle in the fountain. It might be a nice way to cool down.’

  The evening was still quite warm – twenty-five or twenty-six degrees. Wolfgang led Audrey through the pedestrian gate. A streetlight directly outside the entrance threw their twin shadows ahead of them down a narrow pathway that led into the black wall of trees. The sound of their feet crunching in the gravel seemed to grow louder as the darkness pressed in around
them. Wolfgang drew Audrey to a standstill.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, her fingers sweaty on his arm.

  ‘It’s really dark.’

  ‘Well, it is night time.’

  ‘But I can’t see a thing.’

  ‘Join the club.’

  ‘I mean it. It’s pitch black.’

  ‘Where’s Campbell when we need him, hey?’

  ‘We’d better go back to the road.’

  ‘Find me a stick.’

  ‘A stick?’

  ‘Yeah. One I can use like a cane.’

  ‘There aren’t any sticks.’

  ‘Of course there are. We’re surrounded by trees, aren’t we?’

  ‘You’re not supposed to damage them.’

  ‘Wolfgang, don’t be such a goody-goody! This is a life-threatening situation. It calls for desperate measures.’

  ‘We could simply go back to the road. What’s the use of a stick anyway? We’ll never find our way to the fountain.’

  ‘You’d be surprised what I can do with a stick in my hand.’

  Audrey let go of his arm and shuffled over to the edge of the track. Wolfgang heard a series of tentative rustling sounds, then a frenzied threshing of leaves.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’

  ‘I’ve got a branch.’ Audrey sounded slightly breathless. ‘It ... just ... won’t ... come ... off. Ouch!’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Give me a hand, will you. God, you’d make a hopeless blind person!’

  Wolfgang knew she was only joking, but her words stung him. He felt his way over to her, his hands extended. He found Audrey and she guided him to the branch. It was slightly thicker than his thumb and grew out from the trunk of a slim, smooth-barked tree. Audrey had bent it down until it dangled parallel with the trunk, but the damp sinewy wood refused to break off. Wolfgang twisted it round and round. Finally he leaned back and pulled on it with all his strength. The branch tore off with a dull ripping sound. He stripped away the leaves and twigs and passed the smooth, slightly-bowed shaft to Audrey.