Last Days of Ava Langdon

by Mark O'Flynn

  ‘How did you get hold of this place, Mum?’

  He’s making conversation. Her boy. They can talk about the weather. Rain, hail, bushfire. She supposes this is the normal thing after mother and son have been separated for such a long time, after so much water under the bridge. She wonders if she should ask him about his marble collection.

  ‘The publishers gave it to me.’

  ‘The publishers gave it to you?’

  ‘That’s what I said. Angus & Robertson. The deeds are around somewhere. It’s only a hut, I’m under no illusions, but compared to how I lived before …’

  ‘Still, a house.’

  ‘… Yet to me it’s a temple.’

  He moves around over the creaking floorboards, surreptitiously testing for termites. The dolls stare at him with their impassive glass eyes.

  ‘Why? Why would they do that? Give you a house?’

  ‘I … I …’

  Ava is lost for words. She who normally has so many at her fingertips – yes – in her fingers like sparks. Perhaps it was because they, the publishers, think she deserves it: this hut. Her due. Her guerdon, for services rendered. Or perhaps, and this is a more disturbing notion, the one that keeps her salty ghost awake at midnight, perhaps they are trying to get her out of the way. What if they want to wash their hands of her? Shapeless. Superfluous. She did use to spend a lot of time in their offices annoying the receptionists, demanding answers to her letters. How many editors can be out to lunch at the same time? She understands about personal dynamics. Well, if that’s the case she’ll show them. The next novel, number thirteen, is already pullulating in her mind like a … like a … Words fail her. But she’ll show them, all right.

  ‘Jesus Christ, what’s that?’

  Vladimir Ilyich leaps to his feet and the two rats go darting back to their crevice.

  ‘Rats,’ he yelps, looking round for something to smite them with.

  ‘It’s all right. It’s only Plutus and Bacchus.’

  ‘Plutus and Bacchus?’

  ‘Don’t you have rats in New Zealand?’

  He stares at her like someone at the scene of an accident, wondering if they should get involved.

  ‘Not for pets,’ he says. ‘We only have possums and wetas to deal with.’

  ‘Well, my rats are friendly.’

  ‘They’re vermin.’

  ‘No, editors are vermin. Rats are just hungry.’

  ‘You mean you feed them?’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘They’ll have your ear lobe off in the night, if you don’t watch out.’

  ‘Have you come here to berate me? After all these years. Just walk in and start berating.’

  The fire crackles. Vladimir appears to force himself to calm down, making his brain think the right thing. At least, that’s how Ava reads his squeamishness.

  ‘No … I’m sorry, Mum. It’s just … They’re rats … And … Aren’t you lonely, living out here all by yourself?’

  Ava stares at him. Another impossible question.

  ‘Oscar keeps me company,’ she says.

  Vlad looks around the room as if this might be the name of another creature. One of the cats, maybe, whose presence here doesn’t really seem to be paying the rent. The cats are clearly shirking their load.

  ‘Mum,’ he says, ‘you’re a hermit.’

  All this conversation after so much silence, so long talking to her rats, and dolls, and spirits in her head. Dave, Red, Engels. Those voices are the real ones. Not this illusion of a son, a phantom from the past who can’t even recall his own formative memories. Is he not real? She feels like she could put out her hand and touch him.

  ‘I tell you what, Mum, how about I take you for a spin?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A belt on the Vespa. Blow the cobwebs off. Would you like that?’

  ‘On the motorbike?’

  ‘Yeah. Before it gets dark.’

  ‘I’ve never ridden one before.’

  ‘You can be the passenger. I’ll drive.’

  She thinks about it for a split second: ‘All right.’

  The chances of a publisher knocking on her door at this time, after business hours, are probably quite small.

  Ava drains her glass. They rise from the table and Vlad picks up his helmet.

  ‘I don’t suppose you have a helmet?’ he asks.

  ‘I did have a helmet, but I lost it.’

  ‘It’s okay, there’s a spare on the bike. Better rug up, though.’

  He places a wire screen in front of the fireplace, and then pulls on his motorbike jacket.

  ‘I like your jacket,’ says Ava. ‘It makes you look like a space man.’

  ‘Thanks. I like your coat. And that yellow thing.’

  ‘It’s a cravat.’

  ‘Very nice.’

  Ava wraps herself in her steaming dead bear (faux). She feels cautiously in her pocket for any lingering shards of glass. The pocket is still a bit damp but it will do. She’s done a good job. They go outside. Their lungs expand with the chill of the evening air. The sun on the wane amongst the trees, but there’s still bags of light. Although she doesn’t tell him that the winter dusk will fade fast enough.

  Vlad opens the pannier and pulls out a second open-faced helmet. He peers into the saddle bag.

  ‘Oh yes. Here, Mum, did you lose something?’

  He reaches in and lifts out her machete, sheathed in its leather scabbard.

  ‘My knife! Where did you get this?’

  She takes it in her hand, amazed.

  ‘The hospital gave it to me.’

  She takes it out and gives it a swish. Now she feels good. Now she can face the world. She unclips one of her braces and slips it through the belt loop of the sheath.

  ‘What were you doing at the hospital?’

  ‘Looking for you. How’s your leg by the way?’

  ‘A little scratched, but dinky-di, I think you’d say. They gave me some pills. How did you know where to look for me?’

  ‘A cop told me.’

  ‘A cop?’

  ‘A young bloke. Said you’d been skittled.’

  ‘Yes, that idiot wasn’t watching where he was going.’

  ‘He’s been charged with dangerous driving.’

  ‘Really? He said he wasn’t going very fast. Skidded on the wet road.’

  ‘You’re lucky he wasn’t going any faster.’

  ‘Lucky. I suppose you’re right. I’m lucky an asteroid didn’t hit me. I’m the luckiest girl alive.’

  ‘As long as you’re all right now,’ says Vlad. ‘They were pretty cranky with you at the hospital. I’m supposed to tick you off, so consider yourself ticked. Hop on.’

  Vlad kicks the motor scooter to life. Ava pulls on the spare helmet and tucks her ears into it. Giggling with excitement she hoists her leg – ouch – through the middle of the motor scooter. She wriggles into a comfortable position on the pillion saddle. Vlad mounts in front of her and they ease off through the wattle and the tea-tree out to the road. They bump over the culvert.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Chocks away,’ she cries.

  Vlad gives it a little throttle and they’re moving, the motor labouring under the extra weight.

  ‘Oh,’ cries Ava, unused to the acceleration. And the world takes off.

  As they pass the houses of the neighbours Ava takes out her machete and waves it over her head like an Araby sheik, or a Crusader charging a horse of the wild Camargue through the salt-choked marshes, hooting with delight. Mrs Tebbit watches them fly past through the net curtains, looks at her watch, lowers her head to the next chore. No, another life might not necessarily be better.

  ‘Put that away,’ Vladimir Ilyich orders, his voice muffled. ‘You
might hurt someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Me.’

  She secures the knife. She remembers to hang on tight around her son’s strong chest. This chest that she has given him. Returned to her like – well, it’s all a bit overwhelming at the moment; the simile will come to her later.

  ‘Faster,’ she calls, but he ignores this.

  They ride through the sedated township of Leura at dusk, down The Mall through the avenue of flowering cherry trees, bare-boned now, past the wealthy houses to Cliff Drive, the winding scenic snake of a road that twists and turns following the contours of the escarpment. On the first bend Vlad turns his head back to her.

  ‘Lean into it, Ava.’

  Ava does and feels like she’s flying, the wind buffeting the wings of her coat like a parachute. She feels like an enormous purple lung.

  ‘Don’t let go, Mum. Hang on.’

  Ava hangs on tight to her big strong salmon of a son. There’s not an ounce of fat on him. She has never felt so free. It’s like an old bird-dream of flying, gliding, soaring, swooping around the bends. Looking at the back of Vlad’s helmet she sees someone has drawn a daisy and a little red heart. Someone loves him. A girl, or a boy, it wouldn’t matter. A Russian, a Greek. As long as there is love to melt a stony heart. She wonders what sort of a person would love her son? They ride around the cliff tops past the Bridal Veil Falls – she must go and look at them one day – past a lonely paddock with a lone sheep grazing, the road curling like a girl’s hair ribbon. They ride past the houses with the million-dollar views to Echo Point. What – here already? – here at the spot by the fence where she spoke to that poor woman. When was that? Was that just today? And then at the cemetery, yes: Poppy. Look at me now, she’d like to call, look at me now. They fly up the great hill of Katoomba Street past the scenes of Ava’s diverse adventures. Here is the hole in the road now guarded by barricades and winking orange safety lights. Here the church. Here the post office. Here the café. She wonders if Angus & Robertson have received her manuscript yet? How long will it take them to reply this time? How long that endurance test? And here the recent scene of her accident. She looks for her topi in the gutter where it rolled but there is nothing there but a bit of rubbish. The roads are now dry. The shops all closed. They ride on. She is amazed how quickly she is able to revisit her day, these places that on pony shanks took her so long to accomplish. It’s like her life in fast motion, flashing before her eyes. Please don’t let it finish in the hospital, she thinks. Perhaps she will get a Vespa for herself. Maybe Douglas Stewart will stump up the credit? An advance. She’ll give him an IOU while they argue over The Saunteress. She’ll have some riding lessons. She’ll go on a road trip. Maybe to Springwood to visit her good friend Norman – Norman Lindsay, if you please. Imagine how much more time she would have for writing if everything was this easy, if she didn’t have to walk everywhere. Shopping would be a doddle. How liberated she would be if time could be made this obedient.

  Once past all the shops they ride up Bathurst Road, where it looks like someone has been chopping down trees along the railway line. They turn out to the highway, where Vlad really opens the high-pitched throttle. Wasp of the open road, she thinks. They travel adjacent to a west-bound train, the lights in the windows revealing an illuminated chain of carriages, passengers reading, sleeping, simply staring out at the twilight, flickering like Zeno chasing his own tail. The scooter begins to pull ahead and Ava smacks her thigh (ouch) as if she is riding Gala Supreme in the Melbourne Cup. The train hoots. Ha! She lays her head against Vladimir’s back. Even through the helmet she can feel the vibrations of the tyres on the road, the beating of her son’s heart with its indecipherable code.

  In a few minutes – only a few minutes! – they arrive at Medlow Bath, the next town in the string of villages stretching over the mountains. How has she ended up here, after all these years? What coalition of fates has brought her to this point in her life? Again it’s too big a question. More immediately what has brought her here is Pegasus in the form of a whining, flatulent motor scooter. And look, here is the Hydro Majestic Hotel with its famous domed roof like a Spanish onion. Vladimir Ilyich parks the Vespa, kicks out the stand, and they dismount. It’s so long since she’s been here. Has she ever been here? She must have, because it’s clear as a dream.

  ‘Better leave the knife, Mum.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Take the helmet off.’

  ‘I can’t hear you.’

  Vlad takes his own helmet off and Ava copies him.

  ‘Better leave the knife here.’

  ‘Oh … Not on your life, sonny boy,’ Ava hoots, exhilarated with the air in her face, the adrenaline powering through her. The wind has made her eyes water with glee.

  She goes over to the side of the road, where a long line of agapanthus has been planted to form a border between the footpath and the hotel grounds. With a few practised swings Ava lops off some of the dried, left-over flower heads.

  ‘Take-that-you-pedants,’ she pants.

  ‘Calm down, Mum. They’re not going to let you in, waving that around.’

  Ava stops. ‘We’re going in?’

  ‘Sure. Why not?’

  She sheathes the machete and transfers it from her braces to the pannier of the scooter. She wonders if she should brush her hair, but then she hasn’t brought a brush. Vlad doesn’t seem too worried about that. The great onion dome of the main building, called CASINO, rises over them in the dusk, glowing green with verdigris. From a certain angle it looks Russian Orthodox, but only for a second. Ava imagines the Cossacks flying through the air overhead. Vlad offers his arm and together they walk up the gravel drive to the double doors and the vestibule. She is glad he is walking slowly for her, not that she has any trouble with the act of walking; her wound is quietly swaddled and the painkillers are humming nicely. They take time to admire the garden, the crenels in the high walls, the exotic architecture of the buildings. The pinnacle of civilisation. This might be a moment of truth: her boy looking after his mother. It might be the garden of Gethsemane.

  They enter the hotel with its famed ballroom (where Melba allegedly sang), the inner dome of which rises up to the high arched roof. Ava gives a little warble, but no, the acoustics are dampened from the day’s rain, and Melba was a different kettle of fish altogether, bossing people about. Let Melba write a prize-winning novel and win a medal for it, if she can.

  ‘Not bad, eh, Mum,’ says Vladimir Ilyich. ‘The only comfortable place in Australia, they say.’

  ‘The acoustics would have helped,’ replies his mother, this strange little woman beside him. She looks at herself through his eyes, daydreaming she is Melba. Vlad considers her face upraised like a crocus to the vast dome. They’d have told him this would happen – his aunt, his sister – that he would never understand his mother. Ava imagines that he dearly wants to understand her, to at least have made the effort of trying to understand her. And yet, like many sons, the last thing he appears to want is for her to understand him. That would be too intimate. It would allow her to have opinions about his life that might have to be listened to. His own private failings he would like to keep to himself. Paralysed by ambivalence – she knows how that feels. He does not want people getting too close, and is comfortable with fostering a mutual sense of distance. This is how we have evolved. Look what this amoeba has become.

  It’s been near a quarter of a century since he last laid eyes on his mother. It doesn’t bear thinking about too closely. He is the one on guard. He won’t welcome her in. He is the hermit.

  They move beyond the ballroom, past the reception desk through to the Belgravia lounge, swept along by the line and flow of the building, rubbing elbows with chaises longues, lush sofas and armchairs deep enough to sink in. These are scattered about the room like geometric chess problems, lit by subtle reading lamps and chandeliers, little pockets for a range o
f private tête-à-têtes. Ava’s so excited she would like to bounce and jump on every seat, like a monkey with an itchy arse.

  A few gentlemen reclining in the deep armchairs are smoking cigars, their fireflies glowing in the inner dusk. In fact a maid – is that a maid? – is going around turning on the first lights. An energetic porter carries someone’s suitcases upstairs. Ava would like to smoke a cigar. Vladimir Ilyich (why did she call him Vladimir Ilyich again?) ushers her out of temptation’s way, up a long claret-coloured passage called Cats Alley. Elegant standard lamps burn in corners, their peach shades softly glowing, the empty settees waiting for the next passersby to perch on them a while. Ava remembers she was so desperately sick with Vladimir before he was born, so stricken with ceaseless nausea, she was going to call him Toxin. It sounded like a proper name. Lucky she didn’t go down that road. Imagine the questions at the schoolyard gates.

  She dawdles up the carpeted corridor so she can examine, in some amazement, the series of incongruously violent images adorning the walls painted by – can you make out that scrawl? – by Arnold Zimmerman. Look at them! Roman centurions skewering lions with bloody spears. Gladiators lopping the heads off Christians. Muscular, giant charging goats – now there’s a charging goat! Wild-eyed horses rearing at the claws of pouncing leopards. Black panthers snarling on the backs of terrified, badly painted bovine creatures. Other animal contests – bears and tigers, dragons and knights – all rather grisly for a relaxing family health resort, especially if it was called the only comfortable place in Australia, but Vlad’s mother is taken with them. At least Ava imagines her son seeing his mother taken with them. All that armour. Those weapons. The marble ruins of antiquity. Spears and pikes and sabres and, in the background, some lovely desert and jungle scenery. Perhaps she only wants him to think she is taken with them.

  At the end of the ‘alley’ in the bar and dining room there are large windows looking out over the valley. It’s not yet dark. The last of the sunlight casting the valley in a dry, lemony haze. The paddocks all golden below with the bush creeping into it like a blanket falling off a bed. The orange cliffs catch the light and hold it, but for Ava the busy spectacle barely rates a second look.