Thinking he had probably done that plenty of times, too, I nevertheless suspected she was right. He’d have been of that breed of womaniser who prided himself on never having to pay for the satisfaction of his lusts – at least not directly, not with cash.
I said I understood, because I had felt that way about rearing the kids. But I pointed out that a lot of research had been done on carers that showed they needed to care for themselves if they were to keep caring for those they loved. ‘He might be like this for years, Rosalia. Ten years. More.’
‘Then I will be like this for ten years. You don’t think I’m strong enough?’
Raising my eyebrows, I gave a helpless smile. I didn’t doubt the strength of her love. ‘How about friends? Do they visit?’
She shook her head. ‘Too old themselves. Peter, sometimes, but his heart is not pumping.’ I clarified that he had not in fact become a zombie and had merely had a pacemaker installed. Rosalia laughed. ‘Si. And Alejandra comes every Friday. She looks at Gilberto while I do the shopping. Or if he is bad, she does the shopping and I look on him.’
This was something we could both agree was good, so I changed the topic and asked after her son. José, Rosalia explained, was working as an engineer in Austria. ‘I miss him so much.’ And then, as if to save herself from sadness, she said, ‘But I’m looking forward to seeing your niños. They must be so big, no, since last time I saw them?’
‘Yes. If Noah doesn’t shave, he grows a beard overnight. Sunday, I think, has some growing still to do.’ I pointed to my shoulder. ‘She’s only up to here.’
Nodding, smiling, Rosalia said, ‘It will be so good having them here.’
‘Here?’ I questioned, my voice suddenly high. ‘They’re not staying here.’
‘Si. With their mother. And Sinclair. All in the flat!’
‘That’s too much, Rosalia. Way too much.’
In my shock, I’d spoken so loudly that I had roused Gil from his sleep. ‘It’ll be bad for him,’ I said. We both looked at him, watched as he slowly woke. ‘How will he cope with all that noise, all of them trying to talk to him?’
I was furious that Hughes had wormed his way into my father’s house, but also felt fiercely protective of this man who had never protected me. That, too, made me angry. Why should I care if Gil died of vanity, entertaining his pathetic Boswell?
Looking at Gil, Rosalia waved a hand at the space between us, brushing away my concerns. ‘You will like the activity, won’t you, Gilberto?’ He stared at her blankly. ‘The sounds of children.’
‘They’re teenagers,’ I reminded her. ‘The bleeps of their devices, more likely.’
The following day, my last, I arrived earlier than usual. I was catching a train to Glasgow that afternoon; my friend Malcolm Macleod, the sculptor, was back living in Scotland, and we had planned a road trip in his van to the Highlands.
This would, in all likelihood, be the last time I would ever see my father. I was relieved, then, to discover him more alert than he had been the day before. When I walked in, he was pretending to read the paper. He roughly folded it on his lap as he greeted me. Rosalia seemed nervous serving us morning tea. Finishing her own drink, supervising Gil’s, she removed the dirty cups and plates to the kitchen and did not return.
I asked Gil how he had slept, and commented on how much better he looked compared to yesterday. I didn’t think he would remember Malcolm, but needing things to say, I told him about our upcoming trip – that I hoped the weather would hold so we could do some walking.
‘He still sculpting?’ The words came relatively easily. I nodded.
Gil gave one of his wide-eyed smiles and stuttered, ‘Gl- … gl- … glad to hear it. I liked his apoc- … -a- … -lyptic robots.’ His memory was obviously still intact.
Mentioning Mal reopened the wound of my own abandoned art. Although he had never said anything, I knew my decision to stop painting had upset Gil, which, I guess, went some way to balancing the ledger of disappointment between us.
I asked if he had explored much of the Scottish Highlands. He shook his head and garbled something about a reading in Inverness.
After that a silence settled between us and I panicked, thinking this was how our relationship would end. Surely we should exchange something meaningful: a reminiscence, some show of affection, a final word of gratitude or advice.
There was a brutal honesty to the silence that I could not let stand. ‘I’ve been thinking of writing things down,’ I said. ‘About my childhood, how things happened.’
Gil’s mouth contracted in a way difficult to interpret. ‘Brilliant!’ he blurted, his eyes glittering beneath their permanent pools of tears. ‘Yes, you must.’ He paused to let the words gather inside him. ‘I always thought you’d inherited the writing gene – the turn of phrase in your letters.’
His excitement and the flow of words exhausted him. Bloated with emotion, I was at a loss for something to say. Gil retreated into thought or distraction, but it was then that the book I am now writing began to take shape in my mind. His enthusiasm for it essential to its conception.
When Rosalia returned, knowing I needed to leave, Gil returned too, from his fugue. Waving an arm in my direction to help conjure the words, he told her the news. ‘He’s going to write a book.’
Thinking Gil had misunderstood whatever it was I had told him, Rosalia placed a hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Really?’
‘Planning to,’ I said, setting her straight, enjoying her look of surprise.
Suddenly Gil became agitated. He tried to stand. ‘What’s wrong, Gilberto?’
‘I … I have them!’
‘What, Gilberto? What is it you have?’
‘Letters. Mi- …Mich- … Michael’s letters. I kept them all.’ He made another attempt to stand.
Rosalia placed a constraining hand on his arm.
‘For the book,’ he insisted, his arms flailing.
Calming him, Rosalia listened to his instructions about where the letters were stored. I thought about resisting the offer to take them, mainly because I was touched that he had treasured them and because I liked the idea of them remaining in his possession until he died. Then an image of Sinclair Hughes studying them in Gil’s den slithered through me. I decided to take them. I knew this meant my perspective would be absent from Hughes’s account of Gilbert’s life, much as Gil had mostly been absent from mine, but that only strengthened the case for my own written reckoning.
Rosalia took the stairs to Gil’s study and returned a few minutes later carrying a black archival storage box. Receiving it, I opened the dusty lid and saw wads of blue airmail letters and white envelopes sporting Par Avion stamps cinched together with rubber bands that had crumbled and whitened with age. While I was studying them, Gil stood up. Teetering beside me, he offered me his jittery hand.
‘I hope you find more there than you remember.’
I thanked him and gave him a gentle, steadying hug.
‘Bye, Gil,’ I said, wishing then, as I do now, that I could have called him Dad.
The second stroke occurred the day after Madigan farewelled his Australian grandchildren, Noah and Sunday. Their visit had been a great success; so much so that upon their departure he told Rosalia he thought his genes were in good hands. To which she replied, ‘Not just hands, no? Feet as well, yes? The whole body?’
This, it seems, provided Gilbert Madigan with his final laugh in life.
The day following their leaving he was exhausted and spent most of it in bed. The day after that, though, Thursday 8 January, Rosalia helped him shower and dress at the usual time and thought he seemed normal. The new normal: slow, frustrated, obliging, distant, affectionate, disengaged, cheeky, agitated. She supervised his breakfast, set him up in his chair by the fire, read to him the clues for the Times crossword, marking in the five answers he had struggled to produce. Having carefully watched him drink his morning tea, making sure there was no repetition of past choking episodes, she left him readin
g his battered copy of Eliot’s Four Quartets, which, since his infirmity, had become his favourite book. Often, as he slept, the opened pale blue cover of the slender volume would rest like a butterfly on the gentle rise and fall of his chest.
Rosalia teased him about taking so long to read a book so short. Madigan grimaced a smile and, describing a whirlpool in the air with his hand, said, ‘I go round and round in the words.’
When she returned from changing the sheets on their bed and putting on a load of washing, Rosalia noticed the book had slipped from his hands to the floor. Bending to pick it up, she tried not to wake him. His breathing was heavy, ragged. Still crouching, she looked at his face and saw the slackness in his cheek, the billowed sag of flesh. ‘Gilberto. Gilberto!’
His eyes shifted beneath their lids but would not open. Pleading with him to wake, to come back to her, Rosalia wept as she called the ambulance.
The doctors at the Royal London Hospital confirmed that this second stroke was more severe than the first. The head of the Stroke Unit, Dr Jeremy Webb, said he doubted Madigan would ever speak again.
This time the words had truly left him.
Sinclair Hughes, Inside the Lion’s Den: The Literary Life of Gilbert Madigan, p. 522.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Back from their trip, Noah and Sunday seemed different, older. Noah especially. It reminded me of when they were little and seemed to grow or change in imperceptible ways almost overnight. In the month since I had seen him, Noah had grown a full hipster beard and looked more Sicilian than ever. An Italian Ned Kelly, as if my blood didn’t enter the mix. I started calling him Corleone.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘you are Michael.’
‘My side doesn’t come into it. But if it did, I’d be Brando. You’d be Pacino, I’d be the Godfather.’
Sunday was on the couch checking her phone. I didn’t think she had been listening. Shutting down the debate, she said, ‘Let’s face it, Grandad Gil is Brando.’
Against all fears and my more reasonable expectations, they had both enjoyed their time with Gil and Rosalia. Sunday had always had a fascination with her famous grandad, but now even Noah was showing interest. ‘Grandad knew Stanley Kubrick! How insane is that? And Leonard Cohen.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘on Hydra – Cohen, not Kubrick. Gil was visiting George Johnston. Did you ever read My Brother Jack? We all had to read it when I was at school. That and The Falling Part. I guess it’s Tim Winton now, Cloudstreet.’
He shook his head. ‘I haven’t read Cloudstreet either. Bugalugs Bum Thief, does that count?’ Allowing for my laugh, he added, ‘I’m thinking of reading Grandad’s books. He had a fling with Charmian Cliff.’
‘Clift,’ I corrected, watching him spread a thick layer of peanut butter on some toast. ‘He told you that?’
His mouth full, chewing, he shook his head. ‘Sinclair. He told me a stack of stuff.’ Taking another bite, talking through the crumbs, he added, ‘I didn’t know he was such a hit with the women.’ Swallowing, pausing, ‘What happened to you?’
‘Skipped a generation.’
Not long after Gil’s second stroke, I received a letter from Natalie informing me that for the next few months she and the kids would be living in Sinclair’s apartment in the old Lux Foundry in Hope Street, further north in Brunswick. Sin and I are serious, and once the renovations are over he’ll move in with us. The trip to Europe was a like a trial run. The kids have really warmed to him and I think he’s helped bring Noah out of himself. The book’s nearly finished and should be out for Father’s Day. I think you’ll see he’s done Gil proud.
She apologised for any inconvenience their move might mean for me. In my response I pretended that my only concern was the impact it might have on Noah doing Year Twelve.
Nat reassured me he’d have his own room in the apartment and that it would be all over by midyear. Besides, Sinclair’s offered to help him with his English.
I didn’t reply.
Faking it to make it as the mature ex, when it came time for them to move I offered my services and my car – an olive green 1992 Volvo station wagon that the kids called the Shoebox. Surprisingly, Nat took me up on it and I found myself squeezing past Sinclair in the hallway of my grandmother’s house. On my way out, carrying a giant box full of Sunday’s clothes to the car, he said, ‘Terrible about Gil.’
‘Yes.’ I propped against the wall, determined to look casual and not betray the strain in my back and arms. ‘It doesn’t look good.’
‘I’m off to see him again in a fortnight. When he agreed to lift the roadblocks, I promised I’d show him the manuscript before it went to print. Of course, he can’t read now – mightn’t even be aware of what’s going on. But I’m going to keep my promise. I’m going to read it to him.’
The muscles in my shoulders were screaming. I didn’t know what to say. I thought it should have been me having the deathbed scene with my father, not his biografiend. How weird to have your life not so much flash before you, as be painstakingly narrated to you by a virtual stranger. Edging towards the door, I asked him to say hi to Rosalia for me.
Sinclair’s apartment in the old stove factory was massive and had a great view of the city silhouetted against the southern sky. Like Drew’s place, it was all glass and stainless steel, but featured one rough-hewn brick wall, left untouched to remind its residents that they were enjoying views where others had once sweltered casting iron. Seeing the size of it, I wondered why they didn’t move there permanently.
Back in Munro Street, among the furniture and boxes that would remain, Natalie showed me the plans for the renovation, which was really a knock-down in disguise. No longer, I thought, will I be able to lament my exile from the family home, because that home will no longer exist. Only its facade: the two front rooms and the hallway, which would lead to a staircase and a second storey. What was left of my grandmother’s garden would also be destroyed, buried beneath an open plan kitchen/dining/ living room and a large wooden deck, a plunge pool where the vegies were.
I doubt Nat was looking for my approval, but if she was, she would have been disappointed. I felt like tearing the plans to shreds; burning the house down rather than have its memory pimped as real estate porn. Nat had always hated my inaction, but now my anger rendered me incapable even of speech.
It was the last hot spell of a dry, hot summer. In fact, it was the first week of autumn, but now, thanks to global warming, Melbourne regularly burned well into March. The flat was a furnace. I had spent the afternoon passing time, listening to the radio while halfheartedly attempting some preparation for the next day’s classes. At four o’clock I switched from soda water to beer, too hot to worry about dinner. As soon as the sun set, I went for a walk to change the stifling, stale air that I’d been sucking on all day. I left with no destination in mind.
Once outside, I was struck by how empty the streets were. When I was a boy, hot nights brought people out onto the pavements, everyone wanting to escape the trapped heat of their houses. Mr Georgopoulos used to drag a mattress onto his porch and sleep there in his Y-fronts and white singlet, unperturbed by our catcalls and laughter. And Mr and Mrs O’Connor would put their television on the sill of their opened front window, set up canvas deckchairs on the grass and watch The Penthouse Club, Mr O’Connor drinking Melbourne Bitter straight from the bottle. We kids used to get to stay up later than usual because our parents knew we wouldn’t sleep and they were too exhausted to enforce the usual curfew. We played cricket on the road until it got dark or until the ball landed in Mr Georgopoulos’s place and couldn’t be retrieved. Or we fought water wars, throwing origami paper bombs filled from our front tap. More often than not they missed their targets, the water exploding on the hot concrete, the steamy smell of it spreading a rumour of the earth below.
Now the streets were empty. No water-fight shrieks or muffled tellies. All I could hear was the mechanical cicada song of aircons and evaporative coolers. What had once opened the suburb up, it
s windows and doors gaping in the hope of a cooling breeze, now sealed it more tightly shut, everyone scurrying from the comfort of their SUVs to the controlled temperatures of their open-plan bunkers.
I hadn’t counted the beers as I drank them. Maybe I’d had more than I thought, because rather than sobering me up, the walking seemed to make me drunker. I wasn’t stumbling, it was just that my legs felt fluid, independent of the rest of me; my mind, fogged, as if in a sauna, sleepy and agitated at the same time.
Strolling along Pearson Street, past the burnt-off grass of Gilpin Park, I remembered the hot night in 1975 when Russell Neale and I made mischief. To us, the rubbish tip was a putrid wonderland. Once we had mastered the skill of breathing its fetid air without gagging, it became for us a sealed-off realm of risk and adventure. Back then, before recycling and transit stations, everything was dumped in the one place, and as long as we stayed clear of the bulldozers and the professional scavengers, we were free to roam in search of treasure. At night, skinnying through the hole in the fence on Albert Street, we dared each other to climb down to the bottom of the pit and throw rocks and rubbish into the black oily water that covered the spot where the quarrying had ended. Why there? I wondered. Had the clay run out? Had they hit some molten mass? A Middle Earth? The tunnel to China? One time I pretended to shove Russ into the cesspool, pushing and pulling him back in the one jerking action. Shocked, frightened, he swore and went to hit me. That was the closest we ever came to fighting.
Russell’s older brother Craig was in a gang, and they too used to trespass there at night. Except they went fox hunting – tallyhoing, they called it, affecting posh accents. I had seen foxes in there a couple of times, shocked to encounter something wild, which I’d only read about in books and fables, trotting about in my suburb. Still, I didn’t believe Craig’s stories of epic hunts, gory kills, not even after he tied a red fluffy tail to the back of the banana seat on his bike.
Relatively Famous Page 22