Hill of Grace

by Stephen Orr

  Rose explained how both she and Bob were involved with the hospital auxiliary – Bob mending and restoring old wheelchairs in the shed of the shifted tennis ball, most nights after the Colgate Hour, and she as a Lavender Lady.

  She stirred the cabbage, inhaling deeply and smiling at him. ‘There are lots of jobs: the sweets trolley, delivering papers … but I just like to talk. Especially the ones that seem alone. You can tell ’em. Specially when everyone else’s got family around.’

  Rose of a morning, after Bob had left for work, setting off in their Vauxhaul for a specially reserved park; unloading another gleaming, mechanically faultless chair, wheeling it down to the basement as porters scattered imaginary rose petals in her path.

  ‘I had a young lass this morning, lost her kiddy, mind you, this is all confidential. As it turned out it was just as well, seeing how her bloke was a …’

  Nathan never learned about the father, his faults being passed over in a shower of curry. Eyetie or Arab, or maybe one of those wandering types, hanging around outside the Challa Gardens Hotel at closing, draped in black leather across a mechanically faultless motorbike he spent his days perfecting. Moving out at sunset to hunt the innocent, and the next morning, taking his clothes and ‘splitting’ before the sun rose and another disillusioned girl reached for her Balfours aprons.

  ‘I tried everything to take her mind off it. Of course, the parents were off in … Czechoslovakia.’ She stared down into her dishwater, unhappy with the temperature and suds, pulling the plug and refilling it, sparing Nathan the details of how the girl had let the little kiddy go hungry, for days, weeks, crying, and not a single neighbour, not a one mind you, knocked on the door to ask if they could do something. No, not the Australia I know …

  ‘Cold hands, warm heart,’ she whispered, as the water filled up. ‘I’ve left my ring on.’ Removing it. Thinking how cold dishwater could get nothing clean. ‘Still, maybe it’s all for the best.’

  Seeing how lovelessness only led to more of the same.

  ‘How’s that?’ Nathan asked.

  She turned off the tap and looked out of the window. ‘I talked about the movies, but even Rodney Taylor couldn’t bring her around. The koalas at Cleland, which she remembered as a kiddy. The snake show near the children’s hospital. As it turned out, she was one for the racing vehicle. Bob’s taken us to Rowley Park speedway, but she said her people used to live there, so to speak, every Friday night.’

  As she droned in his ear like an Anglicised Rohwer, Nathan looked up and saw a crucifix on the wall: Christ staring down at a stray pea, stranded in the middle of a melamine savanna. Explaining the most simple of spiritual conundrums: yes, he thought, William Miller doesn’t own Jesus, or God – the Messiah lives on kitchen walls beside hand-painted enamel plates of Broken Hill. The Messiah is happy with Rose’s chow mein. And no one has a monopoly on him. For all his dates and Bibles and books, my father has done less to spread the word of God than the Drummonds.

  Eventually Rose stopped talking, something to do with the Myer silver-service restaurant she’d been to with Bob, however that related to anything.

  ‘Are you Anglican?’ Nathan asked.

  She looked around, surprised that the topic had even come up. ‘Bob’s Baptist, but he keeps the Bible in the bedside drawer, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I know. My father’s the opposite.’

  She had no reply, searching for other words to skirt around it, like the topic of lost babies and why the Russians and Chinese were making bombs when all we wanted to do was get along. Not the Australia I know. Still, warm hearts rub off onto other warm hearts and for the kiddy there was still Heaven, praised twice yearly with a visit to St Polycarps (weddings and funerals aside). But mostly God was worshipped on her melamine altar, in the carrots chopped and scones kneaded lovingly to the confessions of Blue Hills.

  Nathan was sent outside to fetch Bob, sitting in a shed of wood and fibro construction, built above a crumbling slab of concrete he’d mixed and laid himself before he knew anything about adding gravel. ‘Tea’s ready,’ Nathan said, popping his head in uneasily.

  If the kitchen was Rose’s domain, then this was Bob’s. It was a place for him to settle in an old arm-chair rescued from an eight-wheeled Bragshaw sit-up. Turf was smoked as broken spokes were re-soldered and split upholstery patched with a kit from the maintenance workshop. Wheels and handles and seats hung from every inch of the walls, forming a sea of parts around a workbench full of ex-S.A.R. tools – as he stared out of the window, working, like Rose staring into her pittosporum.

  ‘Come in.’ Choosing to reveal himself rather than hide in a forest of brake cables hanging from the roof like rampant asparagus fern.

  ‘You’re well set up.’

  Bob stood up. ‘You could learn a lot about trains from wheelchairs.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  He just smiled. ‘I can smell her chow mein.’

  ‘Beats pickled pig.’

  ‘She only has seven meals, in rotation, every two weeks: chow mein, stew, chops, corned beef, roast lamb, bangers and mash – then there’s her off nights: bubble and squeak, fish and chips, baked beans and I couldn’t be bothered cooking … whatever you do, don’t suggest anything new. I try my best …’ Nathan smiled as Bob locked the shed. ‘Once I suggested she do a cookery course – ’ ‘Bob!’

  ‘Coming!’

  As they went in, passing through a gap in a hedge of sword fern, Bob looked up at the stars and said, ‘Know anything about constellations?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Pity.’ He limped as they went, coughing a few times and clearing his throat, explaining how it was an interest he’d like to develop.

  Standing in the hallway, strong with the smell of Mr Sheen, Nathan looked out at what remained of the sky and thought, chow mein and continental, now I’m living. Which was his way of using the smallest things to describe the biggest.

  Phil Drummond was legal and had grown sideburns to prove it. He sat forward in his chair, shovelling chow mein into his mouth and drinking milk he’d made cold with an ice-cube. ‘See, Nathan, this isn’t a society of poets and sculptors. I’d like to be an actor, but I’m told I’d need to go to London. So we dispense Bex, and sell Lux off the back of a train.’

  Bob pulled a long string of cabbage from his mouth. ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Nothing, only if young people – ’ ‘You’ve got more choices now …’

  Phil smiled. ‘Thank you, o tribal ancient. You also didn’t have chow mein in your day?’

  Bob grinned. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘The thing is, Nathan, I’m happy in Kilburn, strangely enough, so I need a trade. Like my dad, and his dad, and his dad’s dad’s dad, and every Drummond that’s ever drawn breath.’

  ‘Or run out of it,’ Bob said, with a full mouth.

  ‘Therein lies a story.’

  Rose came in with a pot of hot tea. ‘Phillip, you’re not being stupid?’

  ‘Mother, please pour the tea while it’s still drinkable.’

  And because she insisted it needed longer to draw, he came around himself and poured his and Nathan’s. ‘You do drink tea, Herr Muller?’

  Nathan choked on a lump of mince the size of a golf ball. ‘Yes, please.’ And clearing his throat, ‘What’s the story?’

  Rose started eating with a knife and fork, piling a bite-sized portion over the prongs and eating, looking up to make sure Nathan wasn’t shocked, putting down her knife and fork, wiping her mouth and placing her hands in her lap. A sequence she repeated with every mouthful, finishing a full half hour after the others.

  ‘It has to do with Phillip’s great grandfather,’ she began.

  Phil sat forward. ‘He was riding his bike down a hill when a pheasant, escaped from someone’s yard, charged his bike.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Territorial. Pheasants are funny like that. Straight into his front spokes, jamming the wheel, throwing him through the air. Crash,
bang, head first onto the road. Three days in hospital but he never regained consciousness.’

  Bob moved about uncomfortably. ‘It wasn’t a pheasant.’

  ‘You told me it was.’

  ‘Still, there’s worse ways to die.’

  ‘Anyway, Ma’ma’, I was just telling Nathan that I’m an actor on the side.’ Phil went on to explain the acting role he’d just landed, as a bridegroom in The Whitehorse Inn, walking on stage with a Scot the age of his mother, staring adoringly into her eyes and repeatedly mumbling, ‘I do,’ followed by their big line together, ‘We do.’

  It was a small role, he was off in two minutes, but he had some business in the chorus as a waiter in lederhosen, and anyway, you had to start somewhere. The problem was, this was where most amateurs ended up too, mouthing the same lines forty years later, as eight rows of relatives on discount tickets nudged each other at the appropriate moment. ‘If I don’t have a lead role by twenty-five, I’ll give up,’ he explained. ‘Either that, or would somebody please shoot me.’

  Bob mopped up his chow mein with a thick piece of bread.

  ‘Bob,’ Rose warned, chewing each mouthful forty times.

  ‘Nathan,’ Bob said, looking up from under raised eyebrows, ‘Rose would have you believe this is the South Australian Hotel, |but she knows,’ turning his gaze to his wife, ‘that if a man mops up his gravy he’s not necessarily – ’ ‘Children!’ Phil waved his bread about in the air. They stopped and listened. ‘Mother, your tea is ready.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  The meal continued with endless renditions of The Goodbye Song as Phil essayed the whole cast’s inadequacies and how he’d been passed over through sheer jealousy, as tailors and butchers and stockbrokers sung mostly out of tune songs through their nose and unknowingly overacted with more ham than a Lutheran’s cold cellar (having heard the story of the slaughtered pig). Sets that wobbled every time someone passed through a door and an orchestra which smelt of mothballs and had to be back at the Klemzig aged care by ten fifteen.

  Apart from that he was having fun.

  A lecture on new antibiotics was discussed besides Nathan’s early progress as a fridge mechanic. Nathan explained his initiation and Rose scolded Bob for having taken part (in fact, having organised it) as she finally finished her meal and decided the tea was ready. Phil explained to Nathan how they hadn’t come up with a new initiation in living memory and how there was really a lot of latent bum lust involved. Bob warned his son of the dangers of such things in the world of amateur theatre but Phil just replied, ‘The closest I’ll come to anyone’s bum is a suppository.’

  Nathan marvelled at the novelty of Bob and his son sparring, superimposing it on his own tea table and becoming depressed. William discussing bum lust and operetta, laughing, accepting and returning criticism, sarcasm wrapped in love – sharing his thoughts about the heavens, inviting him into his study and showing him around. Sons as friends, or sons as a source of disappointment.

  After tea Nathan and Phil walked down the hill to Kilburn station, waiting beside a bed of neatly clipped geraniums as a Maori in white abattoir boots peeled a tangerine, ate it and sucked the juice from his fingers. An express went past and Nathan said, ‘N-class.’

  Phil looked at him, unsure, and grinned. ‘You one of those, train types?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You know, the Bayer-Peacock special was fitted with new bogies in nineteen forty-one. Prior to this …

  ’ ‘No. I needed a job. Preferably not in Tanunda.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’

  On their way to the city, Phil stared out the window and said, ‘My father and trains … generally he leaves it at work. Could you imagine the Romans obsessed by their carriages?’ As they slowed through the Adelaide workings he cheered with the sight of city lights. ‘Anyway, it’ll be a solid trade for you, Nathan. Solid. Like me … happy and well the Laxette way … when your child is crabby, naughty or nervy … tiny squares of nice-to -take milk chocolate …’

  Nathan showed his employee’s pass as they walked onto the concourse. Phil said, ‘Watch this,’ and approached a man in a neat, blue uniform who was standing in front of a full-wall timetable in oak, with destinations and times clicking over frenetically beside a giant four-sided clock. ‘Kilburn,’ he began. ‘Our movie at the Savoy Theatrette finishes at ten fifteen.’

  The lines on the older man’s brow furrowed. After a pause of a few seconds he said, ‘Platform nine, ten twenty-nine.’

  ‘We can’t make it in fourteen minutes.’

  ‘If you don’t dawdle you will.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘It’s my job.’

  They briefly stopped at the men’s and then set off, laughing at a sign that said GENTLEMEN – CHECK YOUR DRESS. Climbing the stairs at the city end of the station they crossed North Terrace, up Bank Street into Hindley. With time to spare they stopped at Sigalas’ Milk Bar and Phil shouted Nathan a spearmint milkshake (‘Available Nowhere else in the Southern Hemisphere’). Staring into the freshly polished vitrolite wall tiles, Nathan couldn’t imagine ever returning to the valley again, couldn’t believe that was where he was from, and had to return to. Couldn’t even recall much about Lilli and their night together, although if anything could still draw him back …

  Settling into the Savoy late enough to avoid the newsreels, Nathan chewed popcorn and drank Coke he’d bought on an advance from his wage. As the Three Stooges flickered, Phil farted and the lady in front of him complained. ‘It’s only natural,’ Phil replied, explaining he had trouble with his bowels, as Nathan lay back and cackled in his hand. And when Mo started in on Larry and Curly he put his head back and looked up at all the phosphorescent stars glowing on the ceiling and thought, Where have I been?

  At one point Phil leaned over and asked, ‘Do you really believe in God?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Stopping to think, reaching over again and grabbing his arm.

  ‘Have you ever done it with a woman?’

  Nathan paused. ‘Yes.’ Unsure if Phil would actually believe him.

  ‘Which is better?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘God or fucking?’

  ‘Each has its own – ’ ‘Liar.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m a masturbating atheist. If I haven’t screwed a woman by twenty-five I want you to shoot me. Does yours have a sister?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You lot have a bent for that, eh? You could find me someone.

  Blonde and big-breasted. Sieg heil!’

  Nathan kicked him and the lady in front looked around. ‘Sorry.’

  The boys reclined, watching the Stooges fuelling a rocket with olive oil. ‘You could bring down more than streudel on Monday mornings,’ Phil continued. ‘Are you convinced I’m a degenerate yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You will be.’

  They made it to the station on time and the man in blue was still there. ‘Platform nine,’ he reminded them as they walked past.

  Phil shook his head. ‘A truly amazing man.’

  Nathan stayed on at the Drummonds that weekend, helping Phil with his lines, learning to lay solder in straight lines, candying almonds on a Sunday morning of hymns and Hebrews avoided.

  Back in Tanunda, William reclined in the back row of Langmeil with his arms crossed. He could see Pastor Henry’s eyes searching for him at the front, moving back over the congregation until he found him. Happy that William had come, but obviously concerned that he’d changed his seat. William had never moved more than a few inches in fifty years.

  William himself, refusing to acknowledge the Elders, imagined Nathan inside the pulpit beside Henry, forming a duo like Laurel and Hardy, reading one-liners from a script which moved the congregation away from a reality which daily faced them: the End of Days. The film monkeys Larry and Mo choking on their lines as they burnt.

  Back at the Drummonds, Bob was concerned. From the way Nathan
had talked about his father, he guessed it was more than fatigue which had kept the boy back. ‘It’ll have to be the rare exception,’ he’d said, and Nathan had replied, of course, I’m going to miss out on seeing Lilli, so much for your yeast. Bob had had a situation like this before with a boarder from Tailem Bend who ended up staying every weekend, always ready with excuses.

  Eventually he asked the employment office to find him somewhere else. In that case an alcoholic father, but he couldn’t let these things become his problem. He’d only reluctantly taken Nathan on, as company for Phil (he and Rose could barely keep up with their son anymore).

  Phil spent the rest of the morning trying to convince Nathan to join the chorus of The Whitehorse Inn, but Nathan said he’d never be allowed.

  ‘Why?’ Phil asked. ‘It sounds like some sort of cult. You sing a few songs and say a few corny lines and the audience laughs, how hard’s that?’

  Nathan shrugged. ‘He would say, it doesn’t praise God.’

  ‘Bloody hell, it doesn’t criticise him either. It’s an operetta. There’s no discussion of the purpose of life.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So if that’s the case – ’ ‘I didn’t invent the religion.’

  ‘He’d never know.’

  ‘No.’

  Phil tempted him with a few bars of the title song but it wasn’t enough. He cut his losses by showing Nathan a journal he’d started keeping of graffiti from around the uni toilets. Whenever he had a spare twenty minutes he’d lock himself in and scribble. Graffiti, he claimed, fell into either one of two categories: the extremely profound or the extremely perverted. He could prove this. He showed Nathan tracings of pornographic pictures he’d made on specially purchased tracing paper. And then he read a selection of work he’d copied from the Barr Smith library dunnies: Where was God at Treblinka? Josie can suck your eyes from your sockets, cheep, 127 496. All of the poetry Dryden had missed, he explained.