Hill of Grace

by Stephen Orr

  To William it was the soundtrack of the stories they read in the kitchen, distant and epic, populated by seven-foot Teutons with swords, early Lutherans in search of the infidel. Until one day his mother brushed past and knocked the gramophone off the table, damaging the mechanism and breaking the record in two. Robert had meant to get it repaired, but then died his own love-death, leaving the melody wafting around in William’s head. In search of rediscovery at the hands of a real orchestra.

  They crossed North Terrace from the railway station, carrying overnight bags packed tighter than the Glenelg tram. William stopped the traffic with his hand, motioning for Bluma to cross as he waited. Mercedes and near-new Holdens revved impatiently and he smiled at them, thinking, Your time’s coming. Adelaide would be a different place soon: cars driven at safe speeds by drivers who were more than happy to give way; politicians cast out from nearby Parliament House as surplus, attempting to return to jobs in insurance and stockbroking; families stopping to pray on median strips; coppers on point conducting traffic as harmonious as Tristan; whitegoods traders punished eternally for obscenely high mark-ups.

  They climbed the steps of the South Australian Hotel, William feeling out of his depth, as if he might be walking into the very mouth of Hell. Greeted by Satan in the form of Lewy, the maitre d’hotel, impeccably dressed in suit, spats and polished shoes, his shirt and bowtie as crisp as the day he’d bought them. ‘Good afternoon, Sir, Madam,’ he greeted, opening the door and showing them to the front desk, ringing a bell and shouting, ‘Barry,’ in a voice which filled the lobby. ‘Hope you enjoy your stay, if there’s anything I can do for you, let me know.’

  Lewy was far too greasy for William. He could see past the act. This was exactly the sort of thing Jesus would sniff out. No doubt Lewy had a cross around his neck, but he was as much a part of Babylon as the publicans and bookies. Like the lino, the hotel was another compromise, for Bluma, who’d stood by him through the thousand shattered records of his own existence, of marriage and children and powdery mildew on their vines. Unfortunately it was the only reward she understood. Other wives in other times would’ve expected nothing more than Jesus. ‘Can’t we just go up?’ he whispered, as they stood in the lobby.

  ‘Someone’ll take our bags,’ she smiled, lapping it up like a saucer of milk.

  ‘I can carry them.’

  ‘That’s putting someone out of a job.’

  It had been six years since they’d stayed at a hotel, a trip to town to watch the Pacific Victory celebrations, to show Nathan the stuffed mammoth and mummy at the Museum and Roberts and McCubbin at the Art Gallery, William drifting off into an ecstasy of Titian and Giotto, endless Christs and weeping Marys in photographically perfect oils; Nathan standing beneath a Bruegel, craning his neck to make out the detail in a market-day painting – hundreds of peasants caught up in their own realities as if it were Goat Square. Ale and pigs replacing snow domes and key-holders, travelling players replacing the Play for the Apocalypse.

  They’d stayed at the Castle Hotel in Edwardstown. William’s choice. When Bluma remembered it she shuddered. Gargoyles, monkeys and a life-size St Patrick watching them in the dining room as they ate Shaslik Mexicaine and Entrecote a la Esterhazy and listened to a troupe of Hungarian refugees sing folk songs under an abstract mural by a Japanese artist who’d committed ritual suicide in Tokyo only a few weeks earlier.

  This time it was Bluma’s choice. Only the best. The South Australian. Settling into their room she eyed the complementary spumante but sighed when William opened it and poured it down the sink. Still, she knew she had to make her own compromises, especially if she wanted her plan to work.

  In the form of a meeting with Nathan she’d planned the previous night, sneaking into Arthur’s after William was locked away in his study. Ringing the Drummonds and talking to Rose for almost an hour, reassuring her in the best way she could, promising she’d pray for Bob, wishing there was more she could do. Explaining how she’d had aunts and cousins with the same thing, and how you just couldn’t work out the whys and wherefores. Rose was cheered, having talked to someone who understood her in the same way she understood others. ‘You’d be perfect for the hospital,’ Rose had said. ‘Both of us in lavender, roaming the wards, enjoying a chin-wag.’

  Eventually Nathan had come on. ‘I’m getting him to town,’ Bluma said. ‘We’re coming down tomorrow to see a concert at the Town Hall.’

  ‘How did you persuade him?’

  ‘It’s that record he broke.’

  Nathan shook his head. ‘He only does things if he wants to.’

  Bluma looked at Arthur, sitting knitting in a threadbare lounge, and smiled. ‘Let’s not start. Now, when should we meet?’

  ‘He won’t want to – ’ ‘Leave that to me.’

  ‘You gotta tell him.’

  ‘I’ll tell him.’

  Arthur listened intently, anticipating every twist and turn of the conversation, knowing how Bluma worked and what she was planning. When she got off the phone Arthur said, ‘You sure you want to do it that way?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘It’s just, when William sticks his heels in.’

  ‘Trust me.’

  Nathan had returned to the Drummonds, busy playing Monopoly on the lounge-room floor. He’d stood in the hallway and watched them, distantly, and wondered how much longer he could remain a part of their family. He wondered if they ever talked about him, working out ways to tell him it was time to move on. No, unlikely, he thought. They’d given him a new start.

  Watching them laugh together he wondered how he’d ever repay them, how he’d ever explain his gratitude to Bob. He would have to say it. There was a lot he was unsure of in life, but this was one of those things you could just sense. One of those things that defined you and built you up and did away with the risk of eternal regret.

  ‘Bluma says she’s thinking of you,’ Rose said to Bob.

  Bob had smiled, speaking slowly. ‘Good-o.’

  Now, back at the South Australian Hotel, Bluma and William went down for tea, settling in on the balcony overlooking Parliament House. A large blackboard, sitting under a portrait of the King, promised a Dance Orchestra Every Night, although someone had scribbled on the bottom, Not Tonite, Sick.

  They ate so early they were almost alone. Bluma guessed it was for the best, sparing her the usual tirade of William’s amateur psychoanalysis. She persuaded him to try the chef’s special, Iced Heart of Palm Brazilian, as she devoured a poached rainbow trout in fennel and lemon. A preoccupied waiter kept appearing to ask them if they were happy and explain that there were plenty of Americans staying at the hotel. Eventually William agreed that the place wasn’t so bad, losing himself in a fantasy of overgrown palms and fans clicking gently in the manner of a budget Raffles.

  They bypassed coffee and Swiss pastries in the Carioca lounge and set off down King William Street. By now William had adjusted to the city, walking slowly with his hands behind his back and taking it all in: a double-deck trolleybus broken down on the corner of Rundle Street, commuters staring down with helpless expressions. A few policemen outside the Imperial, waiting for six o’clock closing, warning jay-walking reffos and grandmothers in hats with terylene netting of the dangers of crossing against the lights.

  The crowd spilt out to the footpath in front of the Town Hall. Voices buzzed all around him, and all at once William was William again, folding his arms and saying to Bluma, ‘An audience of stockbrokers. This music should be for the common people.’ And as if to prove his thesis, he listened in on conversations, pointing out accountants and headmasters in tuxedos as they pronounced Wagner with a ‘W’ and compared their children’s schools.

  Naphthalene hung heavy in the air, mixing with California poppy and the smell of inter-married perfumes. Bluma felt like a slice of plain bread in a sea of croissants. Her brown frock stood out among the fitted gowns. William was aware that his father’s shirt and tie had seen
better days, but didn’t care, strutting around with a touch of the Trotsky, deciding he’d come to represent the workers denied their culture. He guessed they were probably all closet-Christians, dragging themselves to some C. of E. circus every Sunday morning in search of spirit which had long since deserted them. Still, they had the King and P.G. Wodehouse sitting beside them on the Monday morning tram.

  William went to the toilet, choosing to wait for a cubicle rather than line up with the soon-to-be-judged. Returning to the foyer, he stood beneath a poster which read Bhaskar and Company, Dances of India, with the date, March 2, Adelaide Town Hall. A stylised sketch showed Bhaskar (who’d studied under Master Ellappa) involved in the ‘Naga Nirtham’, the Dance of the King Cobra.

  March 2. Friday March 2. Today. He turned to an older couple and asked, ‘Is this what you’ve come to see?’

  They both nodded enthusiastically. ‘The Temple Dance, especially,’ the woman smiled. ‘Anjali and Bhaskar, are you familiar with classical Hindi dance?’

  ‘But what about Wagner?’

  ‘Wagner was last week. We have Beecham’s recording of the Venusberg music, you know it?’

  William found Bluma and whispered loudly in her ear, ‘You got the dates wrong.’

  ‘No.’

  But there was no point blowing his top, at least not here. With no chance of a refund he’d have to make do. Moving into the auditorium and taking his seat he tried to talk himself into it. In the brightly woven tapestries he tried to see images of mountain ranges, like the ones described in the travel brochures he found in Dr Scholz’s waiting room. In the tuning-up of the untunable sitar he tried to hear one of the Mrs Fox’s melodies. But in the end it was just so much inedible curry, hot beyond the limits of the average palette.

  He made it past the Eclipse of the Moon and the Dance of the Golden Plates, but when Puja, the Prayer to the Creator was begun, he looked at Bluma and nodded.

  ‘Sorry,’ she whispered, shaking her head and guessing she’d never hear the end of it.

  The following day they checked out and walked to Rymill Park, where Bluma persuaded him to hire a rowboat. As they drifted gently across the shallow lake he said, ‘I’ll never come again,’ convinced more than ever of the futility of compromise. ‘Maybe we can buy the recording,’ Bluma offered, but he didn’t reply, remembering the row of knees and handbags he’d had to climb over to get out of the auditorium, falling across the lap of some old girl, his hands ending up across the top of her legs, pushed off disgustedly as he tried to regain his footing. Walking out of the auditorium, calling as he left: ‘God is our creator, Christ our Saviour.’

  He reached over the side and touched the concrete base of the lake. ‘Nothing is real,’ he mumbled.

  Bluma took the oars. ‘Life’s what you make it.’

  ‘No, it’s what God makes it. This isn’t a lake, it’s a big gutter.

  How could anyone enjoy boating in a big gutter?’

  ‘People do.’

  ‘No doubt.’

  They returned to the kiosk, bought ice-cream Dandies and sat down at a wire-framed table. Just before eleven William said, ‘If we go now we could get the early train.’

  ‘No,’ she replied, holding his hand, ‘you promised.’

  ‘Well, what shall we do?’

  ‘There’s plenty.’

  She kept checking her watch, scanning the walking paths and cafeteria.

  Nathan stood behind an oleander, a hundred yards east, watching his parents and wondering what to do. He could read his father’s mood – tired, frustrated and out of his depth. It didn’t augur well for their reunion. He thought of turning and leaving, explaining to his mum later how he could sense it wasn’t the right time. But in the end it was Bluma who persuaded him, sitting without conversation, head drooped, looking more alone than he’d ever seen her.

  He started walking down the hill towards them. Bluma saw him straight away and smiled. Then William, following Bluma’s eyes, looked at his son. Nathan shuddered as his father stood and faced him with a blank, cold stare. Nathan stopped in the middle of a rose garden, sustained by the smell of crimson-red roses. William looked at Bluma, picked up his overnight bag and set off around the lake, almost breaking into a trot as he departed towards East Terrace. Eventually he made it to the railway station, settling in beneath the departures board and staring at an oversize clock the Railways checked against Greenwich Mean Time once a week.

  Nathan and Bluma talked until after two, and then he walked her to the station, leaving her at the top of the ramp with a hug and a kiss as she stuffed a twenty quid note in his back pocket. ‘Soon,’ he consoled, ‘then he’ll see sense.’

  Bluma walked down the ramp and found William sitting stony-faced under the departures board. ‘He was looking forward to it,’ she said.

  No reply.

  ‘I had to try something, William.’

  He turned and looked at her, ‘It wasn’t what you did, it was how …’ He offered her a peppermint. ‘C’mon, if we miss this one we’ll have to stay over.’

  He stood up and walked past the man in the blue, greeting him with a single finger waved in the air.

  Chapter Nineteen

  No one could remember so much heat, so late in summer. Mrs Lynch, Rose’s neighbour to the left, seemed to recall a time in 1905 when it cracked the century for well over a week, ending (strangely enough, she observed) when General William Booth, the Salvationist leader, climbed a ladder in front of Adelaide Station, shouted a final message of support to his loyal followers, dawdled down the ramp and boarded a train never to return. A small army of peaked caps and bonnets lined the platform and sang ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’ before the wind changed direction and clouds drifted in from the east. ‘Make of it what you will,’ Mrs Lynch observed, ‘but he was forced off at Riverton when the change buckled the rails.’

  ‘Nothing like this,’ Rose observed and asked, all at the same time.

  ‘No, this is bloody cruel.’

  Rose said how it was like God turning on an oven, fan-forced like the new Kelvinator ones. She thought of William Miller’s prediction and wondered if he mightn’t be right, if this wasn’t God’s way of getting them acclimatised. Still, it’d been hot before and it would be hot again. You just had to cope and wait for the change, the wind from the south, laden with more salvation than William Booth’s tambourine.

  It had started on Friday. The works at Islington were closed when it reached 106. The men were told not to return until the day of a change. Saturday, 107, Sunday, 103, Monday, 113 and today, Tuesday, the all-time record, 116 – proudly announced by Mr Bromley, the government meteorologist who, having presided over Adelaide’s coldest day and heaviest rainfall, had refused to retire until the hat-trick.

  The residents of Church Avenue, Kilburn, set up a sort of humpy town in the reserve. Other streets claimed other areas and soon it was a village of sorts. Different clans took turns mopping out the public lavs and looking after the kids when the schools closed. Sprinklers were lined up like batteries of ack-ack guns and left running for hours on end, turning the grass in the centre of the park green and burning leaves on the hydrangeas.

  Bob Drummond was glad to be out of doors and off work. Although the place gave him the shits at times, he had no intention of finishing up. Almost as bad as a pre-paid funeral. He could still remember Winston Churchill on the radio during the war, talking about success and how it was the ability to go from one failure to another without giving up. Anyway, the thought of them giving him a watch and cutting cake and signing a card was too much. Former best mates staring at him out the corner of their eyes with pity, poor ol’ Bob getting ready to go off and die somewhere. Stuff ’em. He’d hang around as long as he could, haunting them, like a living ghost they wouldn’t soon forget.

  Rose lay beside him as their two boys held Lilli’s head over a sprinkler. ‘What you thinkin’?’ she asked. But he wouldn’t tell her the truth, about how he was remembering six-year
-old Phil building a dirt-floor cubby beside their old diosma hedge, burying Juicy Fruits in a hole he’d dug with one of Rose’s best spoons. Of how Phil said, formally, ‘Don’t tell Mum, it’s for the daddy-longlegs.’ Hiding from the world behind a piece of plywood he’d salvaged from the shed.

  ‘They won’t fit them in their mouths,’ Bob had replied.

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ Phil whispered.

  Instead of telling Rose this, he looked at her and said, ‘I wonder where them gum trees get their water from?’ Using science as a cold blanket for all things emotional, things which couldn’t, and in the end, needn’t be said.

  From her house Mrs Lynch opened her venetians and looked out across the park, smiling. She went into her kitchen and lit the stove, taking out flour to make scones. Just after dark she slipped on a frock and crossed the road with her basket. Soon the Church Avenue clan was gathered around dishes of jam and whipped cream melting into milk. Then she went and sat against the trunk of a big old sugar gum, closing her eyes and waiting for sleep. Bob watched her, contented. In time he fell asleep himself, still listening to Phil explain Tchaikovsky’s suicide to an indifferent Lilli.

  The next day Joseph Tabrar woke early, seagulls flying low over his flat, spreading themselves over the football oval. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, reaching for his shirt and pulling it on. It seemed like most of Adelaide was off work, but the mail still had to get through. A letter he’d been writing fell to the ground and he picked it up.

  Dear Ellen,

  I can’t guess what you’re thinking or feeling at this time, with only a few days till the great disappointment. For me, I’m happy, cos I know it means you and the children are a step closer to moving here. I have faith in your good sense. Also, in our love, which in the end will be greater than other things.