Last Drinks

by Andrew McGahan

  And I kept on doing it.

  It was something beyond reason, and it wasn’t a cure. It was a short-term measure. A holding pattern. I wasn’t dealing with anything, or confronting anything. But that close to the brink any distraction was a precious one, and I stuck to it instinctively. All the aches and blisters and blood, they were an atonement of sorts, the purifying flame of the Inquisitors. I deserved them, and over the weeks they burned away the jagged edges of my life, made it seem endurable again. And somewhere amidst it all I found myself daring to form the thought—I would never drink again.

  But it wasn’t a cure, and the walking couldn’t go on forever. It was Highwood itself that told me when it was time to stop. For two weeks the weather had held miraculously cool and wet, and I don’t remember ever seeing the sun. But finally one morning I stepped out of my room to a bright blue sky and a warm breeze, and a town for once fully revealed. Green was the impression, green everywhere, forested hills rising steeply on all sides, the red roofs of houses creeping up the slopes, treetops on the high ridges swaying in the wind. I thought of the falls, and the hateful, torturous track that led to them, and couldn’t imagine it in sunlight. And then I felt something crumble in my mind, a wall dissolve. I didn’t need to walk that day. That part was over. Nor did I need to drink. At least not at that very moment. For the moment I didn’t need to do anything.

  I stood there, wondering. In the car park the motel manager was washing his car.

  ‘Beautiful day,’ he called.

  I nodded.

  ‘Heading for the falls again?’

  ‘No. Not today.’

  He turned off his hose and considered me. He was round and middle-aged and, as I would later learn, had taken up the motel after retiring from the stress of a Brisbane accountancy firm, having already been through one heart attack. Last Chance was a reference to his own life, not to mine.

  ‘Finished with all that?’ he asked.

  ‘I think so.’

  And I was right. I would not seek Redemption Falls even once in the next ten years. Nor did I miss them. They might have saved my life, but the memory was not good, and as time passed I would have no more desire to revisit the falls than I assumed the motel manager would have to revisit the intensive care ward. Some remedies were too painful.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’re looking a lot fitter for it all.’

  ‘Compared to when I got here, that isn’t saying much.’

  ‘No. So what now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He leaned on his car, thoughtful. ‘You know, as good as it is having a long-term customer, you’re really wasting your money staying in a motel week after week.’

  ‘You want me to leave?’

  ‘Christ, no. But if you’re staying in town, there are plenty of guest houses that have long-term rates. More comfortable, too.’

  Was I staying in town?

  ‘I’ve got a friend who runs one,’ he went on. ‘Lovely old lady. It’s called Pine Hill guest house. I can point the way, if you want to have a look at it.’

  And so I moved in with Joan and her daughter.

  It wasn’t over, though, no more than it was ever over for an alcoholic. Two weeks of walking or two weeks in a detox ward, anyone could emerge sober from that. But once you were back in your old life, back with your old friends, that was when the battle began, when the habits of a lifetime clustered around, drinks in hand. No more doctors, no more clinic walls or, in my case, no more endless movement. I had to stand still and fight it squarely, and it was by far the hardest thing I’d ever done. Frustration and longing turned me short-tempered and mean, and it was Joan and her daughter who bore the brunt of that, and who forgave me for it, who put up with me being rude to the other guests, with me stomping around their house, sleepless, at all hours of the night. And it all would have been in vain if I’d gone back to Brisbane. That, too, was what saved me. My old lifestyle, my old temptations—Highwood, blessedly, was free from them all.

  Later, it was Joan who introduced me to her friend Gerry, editor and proprietor of the Highwood Herald, and that was the real beginning of life reborn. Within weeks of the new year’s arrival, and indeed the arrival of the new decade, I was spending my days talking with Gerry down at his office. In two months I was on the payroll, a working journalist once again. It was a job more humble than even my very earliest years, on the little Brisbane community papers. But I was older and wiser now, and I had sense enough to grasp the chance.

  There was only the one wound beyond recovery.

  One night, a week into the new year, I finally called the hospital and asked for Charlie. A nurse spoke to me at first, then came back on the line and reported, as I’d known she would, that Charlie had refused to talk to me.

  ‘How is he?’ I asked.

  ‘They’ve managed to save the eye.’

  ‘And the rest?’

  ‘Are you family?’

  ‘No . . .’

  ‘I can’t really discuss that with you, then.’

  All I could do was leave the address and number of the guest house, and ask her to give it to him.

  That same night I called May.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she asked, her voice distant, and after I’d told her there was nothing but silence.

  ‘Charlie won’t talk to me,’ I forced myself to say.

  ‘George, what did you expect?’ And then, after a time, emotionless, ‘They’ll be transferring him back to a prison ward soon.’

  ‘How is he . . . I mean, you know, with you?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him.’ Her voice fractured momentarily. ‘He won’t see me.’

  ‘May, I’m sorry.’

  ‘George,’ she said, and I could hear how close the tears were, how frantically she was striving for control. I knew every nuance of her voice, had heard it in all its forms of pleasure and anger and love, and my heart seemed to be breaking apart all over again. ‘George, I can’t talk to you.’

  And she hung up.

  I raved at Joan and her daughter that night, and threw their home-cooked dinner across the table. I stormed out and found myself heading for the bars, for the numbing blackness I knew only drunkenness could give. But halfway there I stopped, my fists clenched, and forced myself around. Loathing every moment of it I went back to the house, apologised to Joan, and helped clean up the mess. Then I lay awake in my room all night and spoke the mantra in my mind, over and over and over.

  I will not drink.

  I will not drink.

  I will not drink.

  I recited it for the next ten years.

  And not for anything, not for Charlie’s death, not for all Marvin’s fears and desperate pleading, not for anything or anyone would I change my mind now.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Back at my New Farm motel I took a long, long shower . . . to wash off the stink of the day, to clean away the touch of Marvin and, most of all, to rid myself of the ancient stench of alcohol. Yes, I’d stopped drinking, but sometimes it hardly seemed to matter. When everyone else still went on as they always had, when the world I thought I’d left behind was still there, when the events of those days still dictated my life, when Charlie was still dead anyway. What was the point? Who had I helped and who had I saved, apart from myself?

  And what did I do now?

  Should I call the police, my friends the detectives? I knew perhaps who had done those things to Charlie, but I knew nothing really, beyond a name. George Clarke. A businessman from the old days, an electrical contractor, a big one, a man who drank vodka, a man lost in alcohol, caught in the web of yet another inquiry. What would they do with a story like that? And I couldn’t even tell them why it had happened. All they’d really care about would be that I’d seen Marvin. Marvin was the one they wanted. And even if I told them where he was, even if they went and arrested him—what would Marvin himself tell them? Marvin was the source, the only witness to it all, but he’d say nothing, not if he saw silence as his only
chance. He’d deny it all. Still, at least he’d be in custody. He’d be safer than where he was now. Unless I believed everything Marvin had told me. That even the police were not to be trusted.

  I didn’t know what I believed.

  This was unknown territory for me, where people acted in ways I didn’t understand, did things impossible for me to even conceive. If it was all true, then what did a normal person do with such knowledge? Loneliness washed over me as the shower water ran cold. According to the courts, I had associated with criminals for most of my adult life, and yet I felt innocent. Naive. Someone who’d walked all his days with his eyes closed. Charlie was dead and that should matter somehow. It did matter, but what could I do? I was no avenging angel. And the enemy was a face I’d seen once in a photograph years ago. Even if I tracked him down, my blood would freeze in the presence of someone who could do the sort of things he’d done.

  No solutions came. I got out of the shower and dried off, sat on the bed. I stared at the urn of ashes, still sitting on the coffee table. Tears pricked in my eyes suddenly. He’d wanted to say he was sorry, with his twisted face and his mind that would never be quite right again, an ugly man made even uglier, a punch-drunk boxer, a little simple, half dead with drinking. He’d wanted to see me . . .

  And all I’d been able to do was bury him.

  Not even that. All I’d done so far was burn him, and his ashes surely weren’t meant to sit on a motel coffee table forever. They deserved some sort of final resting place. I didn’t know where that would be. I was still waiting for inspiration, a sign. I didn’t think it would be in Brisbane, even though that had been his home. But where, then? What place was of any meaning to Charlie, in a state which had turned so wholly against him?

  No inspiration came.

  I went through the phone book and dialled up the Uniting Church Dependency Hostel. I asked for Mark the psychologist and caught him just as he was on his way home. He remembered me.

  ‘So, you’re still in Brisbane,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve been seeing old friends. Some of them were Charlie’s friends too.’

  ‘I didn’t see them at the funeral.’

  ‘They’re not friends any more.’

  ‘What can I do for you, George?’

  ‘Charlie’s ashes. I’ve still got them sitting here. I don’t know what to do with them.’

  ‘You’re asking me?’

  ‘You knew him better than I did for the last few years. I thought you might have some idea about what he would have liked.’

  ‘I knew part of him, but it probably wasn’t the best part. I don’t think he would’ve said I really knew him. You’re the one who was with him when everything was right in his life. That makes you the best judge. Besides, you have to take some responsibility for this. You can’t pass it on to a stranger.’

  I closed my eyes.

  ‘Listen, George,’ he said. ‘Charlie is dead. It doesn’t mean a thing to him what you do with his ashes. Obviously it means something to you. Burial is for the living, that’s part of how we come to terms with death. What you do with his ashes you do for your own sake. Think about how you regarded Charlie, what he had in life and what he deserved, and how you can exist with it all. And see what happens.’

  ‘I hope something does. I can’t carry him around forever.’

  ‘Have the police come up with anything? I’m guessing that part of your problem is that his death hasn’t been explained or resolved yet. You might be holding onto his ashes until you have some answers, someone to blame, and can finally let him go.’

  Answers, I had answers, but no explanation.

  And I had someone to blame, but no reasons.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘The police haven’t come up with anything.’ A thought struck. ‘But do you mind if I ask you some questions?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘You never told me that you had Marvin McNulty in your ward.’

  ‘Did we?’

  ‘The night before Charlie moved out to St Amand’s. Marvin was found in the street just near your place and someone carried him in. He was only there overnight.’

  A thoughtful pause. ‘I remember someone like that, but not the name. I didn’t even get a chance to talk to him. He wasn’t a proper client and he was gone so fast. That was Marvin McNulty? The politician?’

  ‘What was left of him.’

  ‘Did he see Charlie?’

  ‘He did. Marvin was the one who got Charlie into St Amand’s.’

  ‘Oh . . . I see.’

  ‘He still has plenty of money, if not much else.’

  ‘Well, like I said, it was a lucky thing for Charlie.’

  There was no luck about it. More like a curse, as Marvin had called it, the three of them meeting like that. Charlie and Marvin . . . and Clarke. But there was no face when I thought of Clarke. Why had he been there, on that particular night? Marvin was afraid of him, and yet he’d been wheeled into the ward screaming, Marvin had said. Crying. What state of mind did that to a man? And what had angered him enough to hunt Charlie up into the hills, set electric wires to his naked flesh? What would make someone do that?

  He’s still drinking . . . and I saw what he was like drunk.

  I said, ‘Have you ever worked in a place like St Amand’s?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘I’m just thinking . . . alcoholism for those sort of people, for the wealthy, people in authority, is it different to alcoholism amongst the poor, like at your place?’

  ‘Well, it’s not something I have a lot of experience with, but I guess it’s a matter of context.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, for a start, a wealthy alcoholic can far better maintain the illusion of normality. A destitute alcoholic spends almost all his limited income on drinking, so has very little left for food, clothing, housing and the rest. So he’ll look a mess, have poor accommodation or none at all, fall prey to sickness due to malnourishment, a whole host of related issues. A wealthy alcoholic will drink just as much, but can still afford a nice home, nice clothes and good food. He’ll be drinking a better quality of beverage, too, which helps, perhaps, to a very minor degree. Alcohol is a poison no matter how you look at it, of course, but the cheaper drinks generally contain more chemicals and impurities.’

  ‘What about psychologically?’

  ‘Again, context is the thing. The destitute alcoholic can’t help but know he’s destitute, and so his self-esteem is low, throwing him back to alcohol to drown the problem. More than likely, though, he won’t deny he has a problem with drinking, because the evidence is so palpable. He’ll have all sorts of excuses for it, of course, but the basic acceptance is there. The wealthier person can deny that he has a problem, as his life is still outwardly successful. But of course the relationship problems, the health problems . . . they’ll all still be there. He’ll see a bum in the street and he won’t for a second believe there’s any similarity between the two of them, but somewhere inside he knows the only difference is his own money, and that’ll scare him even more, that he could share an addiction with someone so obviously lower than he is.’

  ‘What if . . . what if he’s a man who’s used to being in control? Who needs to be in control?’

  ‘There’s going to be conflict. Alcohol and self-control don’t go together.’

  ‘Could there be a breakdown at some stage?’

  ‘Under enough pressure, yes. Exclusive detox wards are full of the rich and powerful for that very reason.’

  ‘And if he did break down, what would happen?’

  ‘Loss of control would be an obvious symptom. What form it takes is the question. It could be suicide, violence, obsessive behaviour. Lots of things.’

  ‘And if there were people around during the breakdown, people who saw him at his worst, completely out of control, how would he feel about that?’

  ‘He’d feel humiliated. No one likes to be seen that way. Of course, if he was in treatment then that humiliation
would be used as a positive thing to help with a broader understanding, but if he’s not in any sort of care then the humiliation will be purely negative. Which means more drinking, more dysfunction. It’s all circular until it’s broken by a genuine acceptance of the problem, and treatment.’

  ‘What if he told those same people highly embarrassing private things during the episode? How would he feel about them? What would he want to do to them?’

  There was a long pause on the line.

  ‘Just who are we talking about here, George?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘Marvin McNulty? Is that who you mean?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But this has something to do with what happened to Charlie? Up in St Amand’s?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I thought the police didn’t have anything.’

  ‘They don’t. Yet.’

  Another pause.

  Then, ‘Forget everything I just told you. I was talking about inclinations and moods on quite an abstract level. What was done to Charlie was pretty extreme.’

  ‘More than just alcoholism?’

  ‘Alcoholism is a nasty condition, and can certainly lead to violence, domestic violence in particular, but to pursue someone for miles to torture and kill them on some sort of psychological vendetta, I don’t think you can lay all that on alcoholism. Definitely not. You’d be looking for other causes there.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  ‘You seem to have something quite specific in mind.’

  ‘No . . . no, I was just wondering . . .’

  There was another doubtful silence. ‘Okay, George. Just don’t try to apply anything I’ve said to any actual person in particular. It’s never that simple.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And, George, if you are thinking of anyone in particular, then stay away from them. Like I said, what happened up in Highwood . . . that’s an unstable person.’

  I thanked him and got off the line.

  Charlie’s ashes waited mutely on the table.

  I was only wondering, it was only what Marvin had told me. But even if everything Marvin told me had happened the way he said, was there any sense in it? Was Clarke anything like that? It was impossible to say. I knew nothing about the man.