When Morris had asked the unaskable, everyone leant towards the bed like trees in a strong wind, the whole room strung with a piano wire of hope. Now they settled back to lean against the wall, shifting about on tired feet.
Nan had given me the piano accordion last Christmas, saying it was too heavy for her to manage. I had blushed and looked at the floor. I’d always loved that instrument. I’d rather have that than some old foot any day, cash or no cash. But I’d felt them all looking at me amid the Christmas wrappings and kept my eyes down. No-one in this family likes a show-off.
‘Sure would still like to know where.’
‘That you again, Morris?’ Nan’s eyes were still tight shut.
‘Yep.’
‘Lord save us.’
That was the very last thing Nan said. At least she ended things on a religious note. She would have liked that. I played ‘Amazing Grace’ at her funeral service and cried. She would have liked that too. I tapped my foot in a clear rhythm, as she always did.
They never did find her wooden foot, though they went through all her belongings while she was still in the hospital. That cash was always going to be safe from them anyway, it had been in the precious accordion all along. Nan told me the day she’d left the house, the same day she’d asked me to keep her foot, worn smooth with age and warm to the touch, out of their greedy hands. I’d kept it safe for her under my own bed, taking it out once she’d passed. And just like she wanted, I came the day before the funeral and gave it back to her, tucking it neatly between the cold blue satin and her best Sunday dress.
It will keep Morris looking for years with those beady eyes.
Yours Alone
We’d both arrived on the same day. Floris as a reluctant resident, and me a reluctant employee after yet another rejection and a dwindling ability to pay the bills. In her time here, at least three years now, she had mostly kept to herself. Certainly not one for casual chatter. It was hard to judge the line, sometimes, between intrusion and company. She never had any visitors.
I found her sitting in an armchair near the window, staring out at the blowing branches and the storm-tossed sea. I was in the middle of setting the tables for dinner, wishing I were at home with that storm raging outside, a pen and paper, precious time. I didn’t want to start a conversation. We were time-poor with our tasks, too much to get done in too little time. It was easier to pass residents by, a quick hello, how are you, and no stopping to hear the answer. Perhaps it was shame that drew me towards her in the end.
She was a prickly old thing. Her posture always rigidly erect, manners perfectly icy; she was able to convey disdain without ever crossing into outright rudeness, an example of ‘good breeding’. In our few encounters, she had given me the distinct impression I was a long way from measuring up to anything of interest to her. Although, there was nothing about my life to excite much interest in anyone. Even I despaired at the cul-de-sac I’d drifted into.
Still, she was alone by her window, and I was alone by mine.
‘Would you like a cup of tea, Floris?’ The tea trolley was still an hour away, but it wouldn’t take much effort on my part to make her one.
She turned her head towards me, tilted her chin. ‘I would love a cup of tea. If you make it very hot. We never get really hot tea here, you know.’
I knew that. Floris liked her tea hot, black, no sugar, and strong. I got out some of the good china we kept for special celebrations, raided the biscuit tin for the last of the creams. On a whim I made coffee for myself. I might as well take my break early.
Outside, the storm gathered momentum, the view dissolving as showers gusted up against the glass. The wind rattled at a piece of loose guttering and a distant vacuum cleaner purred somewhere down the hall.
‘Be careful,’ I said, placing the steaming cup on the side table. ‘It’s hot.’ I positioned her hand near the biscuit plate, her arm all bone and crumpled silk, the muscle long withered. She had developed glaucoma years ago and was legally blind. I’d read that in her introductory notes. To me, she was just a collection of words on paper, a badly taken passport photo. What would be on my notes one day? Chances never taken?
‘Sit with me.’ Her voice still commanded, even with age.
I hesitated. We weren’t supposed to spend shift time talking to the residents. There were cameras everywhere. Still, I took the chance and sat in the armchair opposite. Silence spun and coiled itself around us.
‘Do you know, when I was a girl, I ran by the sea every day.’
I looked at her, so frail in the wing chair. ‘Did you?’ I could hear my own condescension. I looked at my feet, knowing I’d been at the place for too long. ‘Were you a bit of an athlete, Floris?’
She snorted. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. There was no time for things like that.’
‘Oh.’
‘First, it was the twins.’ She sipped at her tea and nodded her approval. ‘My mother died having them, some sort of fever. I was eight. Father came to the school and took me home. Told the teachers I wouldn’t be attending anymore.’
‘That’s a bit harsh. What did you do?’ I wanted the story, grabbed my cup from the side table. I always wanted the story.
‘What could I do? I brought them up. I looked after the house. I cooked and cleaned, and every afternoon, when father returned from work, I gave over their care to him and went running on the beach.’ She shivered at another hard gust against the window.
I rose in my chair to get a rug, but she waved me down impatiently. ‘There was no money spare, not like now. No entertainment to be had, save what we made ourselves.’
‘That must have been difficult.’ I thought of my own lazy school days, token chores.
‘Oh, I was all right. Just so long as I knew I could get out for that run. It’s what I always wanted, what I really was. A runner.’ She looked over at me. ‘And when I married I ran, and when I had children I ran, and when I got old I ran a bit slower. It took me away from things, so I could hear myself. Never mind I couldn’t go anywhere with it.’
She had the elongated limbs of an athlete, the upright stance. Not breeding after all, but purpose and power.
‘I ran until my body couldn’t, and then I walked. I walked until I could no longer do that, and then I came here. And here, every day, I looked out at the ocean until I couldn’t see anymore, and do you know what it is I do now?’ She leaned forward in her chair, a half smile forming, reaching her hand out to rest on mine. ‘Now I listen,’ she said. ‘And that…that has to be enough.’
The muffled roar of waves pounding at the shore spilled into the room. One and then another and another. The whole planet breathing. I imagined her out there in the wild, young and strong, sand on her ankles.
I put my cup down. ‘What do you hear?’
‘Life,’ she said firmly. ‘I hear life. And it is simply wonderful.’
I stood up abruptly, glancing guiltily at the clock, quickly gathered our cups. ‘I’m so sorry, I have to go back to work, Floris.’
She squinted at me through the dark of her glasses. ‘Do you run? There’s nothing like it, you know.’
‘No, I don’t,’ I said. ‘I’m hopeless at that sort of thing.’
‘But you must do something?’
‘I work here.’ I said. ‘Take care of my kids. All the usual stuff.’ When had I so abandoned myself?
‘No. That’s not what I mean at all. What do you do for yourself? Something that’s just yours alone?’
‘Well, I write a bit when I get the time. It’s just a hobby, really. Something I do.’
‘Does it make you feel alive?’
I thought about the flow of words on a page. The ease and the grace of it, the stubborn push through tangles of thought. The rightness of me, and only me, purpose and reward forgotten. A world in full colour for those stolen minutes.
‘Yes. More alive than anything,’ I said.
‘So, we can call you a writer then, first and foremost.’
‘
There’d be plenty who’d laugh if they heard me called a writer.’
Floris regarded me through milky eyes. ‘But would you laugh?’
I thought about it, felt it firm within me, something I’d known all along and never acknowledged. No-one else cared if I wrote another word. But I did, deeply.
‘No. No, I wouldn’t.’
‘Well, that’s all right then,’ she said, ‘because in the end it’s all you have, you know, your own self. So, you might as well learn to fill your own cup.’
My desk sat waiting at home. The pottery mug I stored my pens in, an unopened ream of paper by the printer, scribbled notes in the drawer. I felt the pull of it like a string line, leading me home. I looked at my watch, another hour to go.
‘Will you be all right here on your own?’
She smiled up at me. ‘Oh, yes. Thank you for the tea. It was strong enough, though it could have been hotter.’
I left Floris sitting by the darkening window, with the sound of freedom raging outside, loud enough for both of us to hear.
Catching Trains to Frankston
Ron stood by the window staring out at the naked flagpole. He checked his wristwatch and saluted just as the sun hit the horizon, imagining himself out in the fresh air, lowering the flag and arranging the folds just so. It was what he did, what he had always done. One constant thing he could hold on to in the confusion his days had become. He felt a hot flood of urine as his bladder let go and looked down at his trousers, surprised that no stain appeared.
‘I’ve wet my nappy,’ he told the girl who was helping crazy Phyllis into an armchair.
‘Just a minute, Ron. I’ll be with you in a sec,’ she said, rolling her eyes.
He wasn’t supposed to notice, but he noticed everything. Close observation was trained into him. After all, it could mean the difference between life and death.
‘Don’t roll your eyes at me, girlie. I’ve wet my nappy.’
Once Phyllis was settled in front of the television, the girl came across to where he stood, ramrod straight, hands by his side, as if still on parade.
‘Now, Ron, what can I do for you?’
He looked at her blankly. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you need a change?’
He liked her, but he couldn’t remember her name. ‘I want to do the flag.’ He was certain of that. He remembered that, all right.
‘Now, Ron, you can’t do the flag anymore. Remember that bit of trouble you had? How about we go and get you changed. I think we might need to do that.’
‘Change what?’
He couldn’t remember any trouble. He and Mr Kiamichi always did the flag at sundown. He liked Mr Kiamichi, even if he was a foreigner. He smiled at the memory of the small, quiet man he’d got to know in the garden courtyard, who had pressed Ron’s big bony hands between his small worn ones like an old friend might, bending in an elegant bow. ‘We must learn to forgive one another, Mr Ron, after all this time.’
Ron had seen the sense in that.
The girl’s voice startled him back from his reverie. ‘Change your pants, Ron. Go to the toilet?’
‘I’ve done that,’ he said. ‘I want to do the flag.’
She rolled her eyes again and murmured under her breath.
‘I saw that. Don’t roll your eyes at me, girlie. I’ve wet my nappy.’
She took a breath and let it out slowly. ‘I know you have, Ron. I didn’t mean to upset you. Let’s go and get you changed, shall we?’
She took him by the arm and went to lead him down the corridor. He resisted. They always spoke to him as if he were a child. He didn’t like it. He wanted answers.
‘Why can’t I do the flag?’
She sighed. ‘You can’t do the flag, Ron, because it isn’t there anymore. The flag is gone. Look.’
They both stared for a moment through the glass as the wind skittered dead leaves around the courtyard in the fading light, twanging the taut rope against the metal pole.
‘Where did it go?’
‘It was taken away.’ She hesitated. ‘Do you remember Mr Kiamichi?’
‘A Jap? That’s a Jap name.’ He was on solid ground now. He remembered that, all right.
‘The gardener, Ron. Mr Kiamichi was the gardener here.’
‘Bloody Jap!’ He felt a surge of anger. He hated Japs, except the little gardener fella. He was all right. He helped him do the flag.
‘Yes. Mr Kiamichi was Japanese. He was your friend.’ She smiled at him, cupping his elbow lightly in her palm.
‘Bloody Japs!’
The girl shushed him, gently shaking his arm.
‘Use whatever’s to hand!’ Ron dropped his voice to a whisper and looked around suspiciously. ‘Use whatever you can! Our Sarge says that. Anything you’ve got will do, anything at all.’ Ron’s eyes clouded over with hazy memories. ‘Only good Jap’s a dead one.’
Ron looked around the room, noting that the laundry bag hadn’t been emptied. He liked it here most of the time. There was a order about the place. Sometimes things went wrong, of course; the world was an unpredictable place when it came down to it. It could spin from order to chaos in an instant. Sometimes they even served rice with a curry in the dining room. Jap food. Ron didn’t like the smell of it. Couldn’t abide it. Not since the war, never could since then.
Kate knew, she’d never made rice, she’d known him so well, but she was gone now. Lots of things had gone. His wife, his house, his train of thought. But the stench of cooked rice still made his head hurt till he had to shout away the confusion and anger. He’d told them. He was sure of it.
He looked at the girl’s hand on his arm and then her face. He liked her, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember her name. He stood to attention under her gaze. They needed someone in charge these days, that was the problem. Everything gone to rack and ruin. No-one making the decisions that needed to be made. No-one taking action.
Not like before. Not like in the war. Not like New Guinea.
Fragmented images ran through his mind’s eye. Heat and mud and rotten feet. The skin coming off with one’s socks, the putrid bone showing through. All of them laughing their heads off when Jonesy spewed that first day on the boat going over. What a lark it had seemed. They’d called him ‘Spew’ afterwards, till he spiked his foot on a booby trap shit stick and died long and slow enough for them to hate him and his noise, and the weight of carrying him hopelessly through the jungle.
All his mates, all those mates! So many of them…gone. The rest a ragged bunch of survivors turned animal, living on instinct, talking endlessly of home to try to stay sane even though none of it felt real anymore.
With the thought of home, the images shifted again. Memories of melting ice-creams in a Sunday park. A dress his wife wore decorated with apples along the hemline. The crisp folds of The Bulletin in the warmth of the train after a long day. Going home to Kate in the sleeping suburbs, damp trilby on his knee.
Before the call-up. Before the world went mad.
Ron’s breath caught in his throat as he tried to grasp onto something solid, holding the grab rail fixed to the wall as the jungle claimed him in a waking nightmare. Day after day after day, hiding from the Japs, endless nights full of twittering and scratching and the quiet weeping never mentioned. Only the dead properly asleep and envied for it. The vomit, the pus, the stink of fear and weariness. Strong men, his mates. Broken and never mended.
Ron plucked irritably now at the dampness at his crotch. His skin felt too tight, his palms sweaty, his head full of noise.
Use whatever’s to hand!
The Sarge’s voice echoed down through the years and the nightmares like it was yesterday. A terror lodged deep inside, carved like a name on the memorial of his soul. Visions of the invaders overrunning the world, raping their women, killing their children.
Use whatever’s to hand, men!
Sarge had drummed it in, over and over, until it ran like oil in their blood.
He felt the gir
l’s hand, warm on his arm, and leant into her calm centre as images swirled around him. They had to keep them safe, had to.
This is the last line of defence. If we don’t stop them here, who knows what will happen back in Australia?
And there was little Frankie, his boy, not yet five in the picture she’d sent him. Back at home with his mother, riding his bike on the gravel with that great smile, wide as the summer sky.
If they didn’t fix it, the Japs would get the lot. They’d be catching trains to Frankston in kimonos.
A memory fell into his mind, fighting its way through all the other tangled fragments. The smell of rice left from lunch drifting into the courtyard, sticking in his nostrils as he’d furiously swept the paving stones free of leaves, trying to keep the anger at bay. The loose rope hanging carelessly from the flagpole, an enemy face coming at him in the half-light.
Use whatever’s to hand, men, whatever you can find!
An awful banging in his brain, people running and shouting. The flag torn down to loosen the garrote around the enemy neck, the Southern Cross stained with boot prints and a small body broken on the paving. Then fog and confusion and a haze of whispered voices and medication adjustments.
‘I killed the Jap.’ Ron’s voice was flat but sure. ‘They pushed me over, they grabbed me. Why did they grab me when I killed that Jap?’
‘It’s all right, Ron. They had to. You didn’t mean it. We understand.’ The girl ran her hand up to his shoulder and squeezed a gentle reassurance, a sheen of tears glassing her eyes.
‘I killed the Jap.’ His hands were shaking now, his body oddly weak. He could feel his heart large in his sunken chest, a pelican trying for lift-off.
‘Come on, Ron. Let’s not think about it now. How about we get you changed and settle you down to watch some TV, hey?’
The world swam slowly back into focus, the frightening images fading into the familiar hush of the present; slightly overheated air, soft lighting and the girl looking at him. He loosened his grip on the rail with her encouragement and let her lead him to his room to sponge off his backside and shrunken genitals. They smiled together and the pelican quietened down. He took his tablets, feeling them push past the lump in his throat.
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