Emmett’s nearly fifty now and as dull as an old boxer. His hair is whispery grey and the circles under his eyes are muddy. Even the blue of his irises seems to have drained away and his fingernails are ridged and chalky. He drinks as much as he ever did, but it takes less to get to forgetting. He’s drinking whisky now and only the dream of early retirement keeps him going. Five years to go, he thinks, just five rotten years.
Apart from working and drinking, he grows tomatoes and he’s just about perfected a new feed for them which he calls rocket fuel. He soaks seaweed in the old yellow bucket until it’s so ripe it feels like you’re dicing with death just to breathe. Then he mixes in blood and bone. Labels the side of an old cordial bottle and splashes it around liberally to produce Grosse Lisse tomatoes as big as bulls’ hearts.
The afternoon they collect the kelp down at Willy back beach long stays in Anne’s mind. She’s living at the shop but comes back on the weekends to help keep Wolf Street decent. She has work to do but he wants her to come with him, and won’t take no for an answer.
It’s a wide open day and she can see at least three shades of blue in it, and the bay is as flat as a pan. She sits on the bluestone wall watching him awkwardly stumbling around on the rocks collecting seaweed that looks like hessian strips and stuffing them into the yellow bucket. It’s the one they made the Christmas pudding in all those years ago and each of the kids got a stir for luck and Emmett called Rob a stirrer and laughed and Rob threw the spoon at him and it all ended in tears. Time in a bucket.
Anne’s not speaking to Emmett today. He might not be so rough anymore, she thinks, but he’s still a pig and a bore and she lets her silence do the talking.
Yabbering on and on as he drove to the beach with the car slicing down the narrow road through this bluest day, Emmett told her over and again about his bloody seaweed stew.
‘It’s the best stuff, Annie,’ he boasted and turned to her and his big face filled all space. ‘Annie, you listening to me? This stuff is the goods, I’ll give you the drum on that. Jim, the old wog bloke at work, the cleaner, you know old Jim, the one whose kids are so smart? I told you all about them. One of them’s an engineer and the other I can’t remember what he does, might be something at Holden over in Broadie. Any way, he gets a new car every second year whatever he bloody does, lucky bastard ... well anyway, this is his recipe. Swears by it. And you know these wogs, they can grow any bloody thing.’
He burbled on and on and who cares? thought Anne. What difference can any of it ever make? Raving on about tomatoes and other people and not about normal things like his own kids or fixing up the house or even cutting back on the grog.
He’d insisted she come down here to Willy. It’s not as if she didn’t have plenty of other things to do at the shop or even over in Wolf Street. The laundry there looks like a Chinese joss house and the ironing pile is starting to smell. Centipedes dart at you when you shake the clothes out. But even these days it’s better not to say no flat out. Always keep your head down.
And then down there at the beach while she’s having a quiet smoke, she sees him at a distance and he seems like a speck of a man and not much at all. There’s a clarity that falls on you some days. You wait for it and when you wait, it doesn’t show and then, here you are sitting at the beach not waiting and it’s there. Just there, plain and beautiful. He’s just a man and not much of a one at all really, a small man out there under the increasingly fleecy sky against the disc of bay.
She gets up from the bluestone fence and dashes out her smoke not even regretting that it’s only halfway through and takes herself across the rocks, careful on her wafer-thin thongs, over to where Emmett is industriously loading up with seaweed, sighing and groaning and enjoying a sly fart into the wind. When she gets near enough he says in an injured tone, ‘A man wouldn’t mind a bloody chop-out now and then,’ and he reminds her of each one of her children.
The sun is gentle and the wind whips her hair under her sunglasses and into her eyes. She lets it be. She grabs hold of a long strip of seaweed and he gets hold of the other end and he laughs, lets it fall to Anne and she picks up the rubbery strip and drops it into the bucket. And she smiles, but just to herself.
***
The days of Wolf Street are numbered. There’s been a change in Emmett, a slow sagging decline that on good days Rob sees as a kind of apology that comes with a kind of ease. But Emmett is still as changeable as the future. And so there’s no surprise when one day in this peaceful period, Robert must tell his father the truth.
It’s been a happy Saturday afternoon, the sky outside holding the pearl light of winter and the moon already hanging like a white penny, while inside the Browns are laughing and talking. Rob is working these days at a factory where they recycle old car batteries that leak acid like dirty rivers. It’s gruelling and filthy but he’s getting strong, making some dough and starting to see himself as a man. ‘You’ve got muscles on your muscles, Robbie boy,’ Anne tells him one day after work and he allows himself a smile.
Dreams of science degrees have washed away with his childhood, but they weren’t his dreams anyway. One day he will do his horticulture degree but now he just wants money so he can get away. The work at the factory is tough and it’s made him hard. But he still needs more money for his trip so, a couple of nights a week, he serves drunks just like his father at The Standard, a dark ungainly triangle pub on the junction in Foot scray. It’s always filled with shoals of drunks. And he watches them with a cool reckoning. Human sponges, he thinks, sucking everyone in.
Even though lunchtime at Wolf Street is noon, hours later, in a little act of defiance, Jessie’s making herself a sandwich. No one will notice her because no one ever does. From the barren old fridge, she’s wrangled a slice of Stras and now she’s after the tomato sauce. She’s planning on meat with sauce, so she keeps her movements quiet and creeps around. She’s nine and round as a speckled egg. The bread is stale, so she toasts it and knows the noise of the toaster will annoy her father. He darts a look at her every now and then, as if she were a blowfly he means to squash.
In the hub of the kitchen, Emmett is expansive. The footy drones out of the radio and is turned down because North is losing. All afternoon it’s been one VB after another and, now that he’s fully tanked, he reckons Jessie shouldn’t be here. She’s bloody infuriating, cramping his damn style with the boys who, now they are adults, are finally innaresting. She has her hand on the food, knife underneath, ready to cut it in half when he lets loose with, ‘What the bloody hell are you doing over there? Why the fuck didn’t you eat at lunchtime? Useless fool of a child. What is the matter with you? Bloody pest of a girl, always have been. Go on. Get out of there, bloody idiot child...’ He flicks his wrist at her as if she were a dog while he drinks with the other hand. And, over the glass with his practised hard look, for good measure he hisses, ‘Piss off outta here now. Consider yourself warned.’
In the scheme of things, it isn’t much. There’s been worse. But for Rob at this moment, Jess and her little sandwich stand for everyone. He’s been hearing this shit since the day he was born. The sediment of it is in his bones. And hearing the crap has poisoned him. So now he doesn’t think. He pushes himself up and stands, leaning hard on the table to brace the shaking in his hands, in his heart, and quietly but loud enough says, ‘I’ve had you, Dad. Had you forever. Just do us all a favour and shut your mouth for once. You don’t care about us. You never loved any one of us, so why don’t you just piss off and let us get on with our lives?’ His eyes are wide, fists clenched and his heart is driving blood through him. It’s as if he’d taken a lift to the next floor and now he’s there.
Oh oh, thinks Jessie, pushing herself back into the corner between the stained cupboards and the dull sink with the scungy pink wettex neatly under the plug. Fear lifts in her but there is something else, and she doesn’t know what it’s called. When she’s older she’ll call it elation. Now she thinks with astonishment, ‘someone stood up f
or me’. Her delight is short-lived.
The scene unfolds, Emmett comes charging at Rob and the chair falls behind him as he pushes forward. He roars, ‘You fucking little dickhead. Who do you think you are? You are nothing, boy. Absolutely...’ And Rob sees his broken father held by an eternity of defeat.
The old man shoves Rob in the chest but Rob, now grown tall, blocks him and Emmett staggers. Over in the corner, Jessie still holds the knife in the shadow of her hand so hard the bone handle prints into her palm. She’s stopped breathing but she’s utterly ready.
Emmett and Rob stare at each other for a second or two and that small slice of time burns away. Then Rob grabs the tea towel on the table and chucks it at his father, and the cloth lands on Emmett’s head, checked and floppy as an Arab’s headgear. Rob looks at the old man and, in that tiny moment of disgrace, a smile passes through his eyes and he says, ‘Think you’re bloody King Farouk, don’t ya...’ And then, screen door slamming, he’s gone.
Jessie watches her brother leaving. Sees her father raising his glass to his lips, sees the amber of it and the shaking hand. Her heart is loud within her and her eyes are running with stealthy tears. She edges past Emmett, ducking down out into the yard, thinking, you’re a bully, nothing more and you know what? Robbie’s found out about you and you’re finished. And she weeps till she doesn’t know who she’s weeping for. As she climbs the peppercorn tree, she pushes the bread and butter knife up her sleeve.
Up here she can see the Uncle Toby’s silos. She’s still shaking as the coldness of the day moves into her. There is, lurking within, the unusual idea of stabbing her father. The image of it is there, but not the reality, which she is glad of. She wonders what she would have done if he’d hurt her mum or either one of her brothers or, she admits grudgingly, even Louisa, but she doubts she would ever have the guts to go through with it. And sitting there on the pitted branch of the raggy peppercorn tree, a goods train passes between the silos and the back fence and she watches it being absorbed into the cold cottony afternoon and still her tears fall and as she touches the dent in her palm left by the knife handle, it’s then that Jessie realises who she is and who she loves, and this gives her hope. She wipes her eyes and has a go at carving the letter ‘R’ into the gnarled tree limb and after a while, she realises this is not a knife to have done damage to anyone.
32
Demand for weatherboard box houses in skinny streets in West Footscray is slow, and selling takes months. Emmett’s trying to take it easy and cut back once again on the grog. But it’s not easy. He can’t get a proper breath into his bloody lungs. And he cannot sleep. Not at all. Not one single bloody wink. Beer, that’s the answer, he tells himself, good old beer never hurt anybody, it’s practically medicine.
The new neighbours are wogs of some kind and the woman next door bellows the kid’s name morning, noon and night. Sounds exactly like ‘arsehole’ to Emmett. One night over spaghetti puttanesca, Peter tells him that the kid’s name is Tassos but this doesn’t help. Emmett isn’t mad on these spicy sauces either, or spaghetti really when it comes down to it, but the kid’s made an effort, so what can you say? These days there’s not much of an audience for his tantrums. And tantrums really take it out of you. He often finds he has to take a sickie the next day.
One afternoon, Emmett, home early as ever, finds Peter herded out by the estate agent into the backyard under the clothesline on the crate picking out ‘Wish You Were Here’ on the guitar. The tomatoes have gone all leggy and smell ripped and tight, with a few as red as rubies and getting redder.
A family of six is poking around inside with the air of owners. Emmett comes upon a grandmother sitting in his chair in the lounge room and for one white second he nearly explodes. Instead he storms out, alarmed and ready to riot, but for some reason he keeps his voice down. There is money involved, he reasons, and a deener is still a deener.
He heads straight for Pete in the yard and hisses pretty loud, ‘What the fuck is going on? Who are those bastards telling a man what to do in his own house? And there’s a bloody old wog sheila sitting in a man’s chair. Fair bloody dinkum mate, this is it. We have reached the dizzy fucking limit!’
Pete explains that the agent wants one last go at selling the joint. ‘Apparently they’re fair dinkum,’ he says, and Emmett’s eyebrows rise and the peerless blue sky swims around them. The light’s so clean today, Pete thinks, that even here in Footscray, you feel the planet moving through space. Not such a bad day. He manages a smile at the old man.
Emmett turns to the hose for comfort and waters his remaining tomatoes. A small child detaches itself from the party looking at the house and comes to stand beside Emmett. ‘What’s your name?’ says the child.
Emmett can’t bring himself to speak to the boy and briefly considers hosing him, could do with a good drenching, he reckons, but decides against it and just says quietly, ‘You better choof off now young man, your mother wants you.’
Peter goes up to talk to the agent and it seems the Greeks do want the house and have even made an offer there and then on the front verandah with a solid brick of cash to back it up. The agent holds it like it might fly away and grins nervously.
The years at Wolf Street tower before Peter. This house is at the heart of every single thing he’s ever known. He walks down the passage out to the kitchen. He stands on the step and looks over at Emmett watering in the yard and the idea of leaving slams into him.
How can we possibly not live in this shit-hole? he thinks. All the pain. And Daniel. In his mind Pete sees the corner of the kitchen where Daniel hit his head.
When Peter walks over Emmett, feeling philosophical, says, ‘Agent piss off then? So much for fair dinkum with those blokes. Would not know the meaning of the word.
‘Growing things, Peter. This is what it’s all about mate. You grow something and it does what you want. It’s obedient and quiet and you can eat the bastards.’ And Peter understands that his father clearly prefers tomatoes to kids and his wife, which is no surprise. He looks back at the house, steadfastly refusing to praise the tomatoes.
‘Come on Pete, look at this beauty. They are works of bloody art, for Key-Ryst’s sake mate, you’ve got to admit.’ So inevitably Peter slides his eyes towards the tomatoes and says, ‘Yeah, they look great Dad. What do you want for tea? Tomato soup?’ He’ll tell Emmett about the sale after tea. Tell him before, and he’ll only get himself all worked up and ruin another good meal.
Silence follows and Pete moves into the kitchen to produce a dinner that since Louisa has started teaching him about food always has something special: yoghurt and mint sauce with the chops or a glistening salad and a good vinaigrette. At last Emmett has the cook of his dreams working for him.
***
Emmett takes to Louisa’s John Keele with an ease that astounds everyone. The man who hates outsiders, who trusts no man, well, it turns out, he doesn’t mind John Keele at all.
The first time Louisa brings him over he says politely to John dithering at the screen door, ‘Come in, young fellow, what the hell are you waiting for?’ and gives him a quick once over. ‘Hair’s very light. One of them Scandinavian mob are you?’ he wonders out loud, not waiting for an answer.
He turns to Pete and bellows, ‘For God’s sake Pete, get this bloke a bloody beer. Quick smart! Can’t you see a man’s dying a thirst here?’
Pete goes to the fridge and swoops in, grabs one and hands it to John who smiles his thanks. Emmett’s grinning away at John like the Cheshire cat but Louisa thinks, I’m the invisible one. Unfolding plainly before her is something she’s long suspected, her father prefers men. Women, she thinks bitterly, he sees no sense in us at all. You need a penis to be real around here.
Still, she gives a thin little smile, glad enough that Emmett likes John. Relieved that the night is full with Emmett’s bounty. Pete leans back against the wall and they settle in for Emmett’s performance. He launches into a few poems starting with Banjo and moving on to Lawson and
C.J. Dennis and John keeps smiling.
Louisa doesn’t know whether to be horrified or to laugh. She thinks she loves this man, but having Emmett in full flight is bound to put anyone off. How do you stop Emmett Brown? And what if it turns? But John seems to be happy. He’s laughing and joking with Emmett and even reading a few poems. What’s going on?
Then the mood shifts with the light outside the window. Anne says they should be thinking about tea. ‘What about Chinese,’ she suggests, ‘celebrate meeting John?’
The Book of Emmett Page 16