I thought about Tilly and tried to piece the puzzle together, but I still needed answers—certainties. Without these the trip was in vain. I began to wonder if Mr Willoughby was perhaps giving me a chance to leave quietly. It seemed plausible, then possible, then probable. He had not said anything explicit, but where was he?
Mr Willoughby finally returned a few minutes before ten p.m. I heard the ute, then headlights ran over the living room. Oddly, there were no dogs to bark.
I helped him in with the shopping. Although characteristically stooped he looked a little stronger, and drunk. He lurched under the weight of the shopping bags and twice avoided looking me in the eye. When he spoke his voice was a mumble, as though his sentences had no real importance. We set up a lantern in the backyard and barbecued three steaks. We drank beer and did not bother with vegetables. We said little. After the beer ran out we swapped to whisky, served straight. Around us the night wind delivered far-off sounds. This wind had been reassuring all afternoon, but now it seemed impatient, like it wanted me to speak up. Mr Willoughby lit a cigarette and offered me one. I nervously accepted.
‘So we both want information,’ he said, surprising me. He stood and crossed to a window, staring inside as the wind flung his hair about.
‘How did she die?’ I asked. ‘Was it in that fire?’
‘Leukaemia.’
‘Leukaemia?’
‘Her third time. The first two bouts she battled when she was still just a teenager. She didn’t tell you about it, did she …’
‘You mentioned she was sick.’
‘True. I did.’
‘And the fire?’
‘An accident.’
I remembered the story Tilly told me on the phone and it occurred to me Mr Willoughby had probably lit it himself.
‘How long had she been sick?’
‘This time not very long. The first two times everything was about survival. Her mother died of cancer, as I think you know, and I was determined Matilda wouldn’t. To you that might sound natural, but it’s not. Not at all. It’s selfish.’
Mr Willoughby loosened his shirt which had bunched a little around his potbelly. ‘Let’s get inside,’ he said. ‘It’s too cold.’
I followed him indoors, and in one corner the cat that had snuck in sneezed gingerly. It appeared with the subdued pride of a magician from behind the piano, stretched its body and strode to Mr Willoughby, who reached down to pet its ball-like skull.
‘With Matilda’s mother I was confident. Being confident was my job. No matter how crappy some piece of news—some doctor’s honesty—by the time I repeated it there was a positive spin on it, an angle no one had thought of. I still believe she needed me to be like that. Never mind that she died in inches, died in the sort of pain you could only begin to understand by lopping off your arm at the elbow and dunking it in this whisky. In and out, day after day.’ He cleared his throat and took a sizeable gulp. ‘Five a.m. comes, goes. That’s when you hold your breath, hope for a miracle. You go along and here and there even get your hopes up. We’re halfway through. Not in the clear, no, but halfway. And half of nothing is nothing. I couldn’t have tortured the poor woman better if I tried.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Naturally I approached Matilda’s illness the same way. It was something I could do. She was young and she believed me. If I said it wasn’t going to come back, then it wasn’t. But it did, as leukaemia often does, making a liar of me. It shot my credibility to bits. The second time she didn’t want to hear a word out of me, like it was my talk that jinxed us to begin with.’
Mr Willoughby, taking another long gulp and putting the tumbler down, misjudged the coffee table. Glass banged loudly on wood.
‘By the time the symptoms showed up a third time it’d been years. Statistically she was in the clear.’ He coughed. ‘I told myself it was a whole host of other factors, nothing to do with leukaemia. This was before you first came to stay. She returned with the results the day you arrived, told me while I pretended to fix the ute.’
‘I had no idea.’
‘I didn’t agree with keeping secrets, but it was her call, not mine.’
‘She chose?’
‘After you left,’ Mr Willoughby said, ‘there was a leak at the hospital. Not the staff I don’t think. Someone must have overheard something and it spread around town. People avoided us in the supermarket or gushed with sympathy. Matilda hated both. People get nervous around death. The hint and history of it.’
Mr Willoughby shooed the cat off, and it made a point of strolling away at its own, unhurried pace before settling near the piano. ‘She saw more specialists in Melbourne, getting all the details into a pile. It became clear the odds were stacked against her. We talked about you, about telling you, but she decided to keep you in the dark. It was nothing personal. More that you were the last person alive who knew her well but didn’t know a thing about the leukaemia. She liked that. She began to talk about Tokyo, about returning. I droned on about treatments. That was the pattern of talk in this house. Eventually she decided to forego treatment and take that short-term university job. That was all it was ever meant to be. Three months of a normal life, then she was going to return. When she got back a little early she let me believe she’d told you everything. I presumed you’d decided to stay put.’
I said nothing.
‘I’m Catholic. Sometimes I think life—all life, any life—is worth fighting for, much like I used to. Maybe I’ve never deviated from that view, only made this one exception. You saw me with those stupid bloody frogs. I like to think I can save things. But surely when someone’s going to die, when they truly want to die, it’s cruel to stop them.’
‘You helped her?’ I ventured.
Mr Willoughby’s eyes clouded and he shook his head. ‘No.’
‘She did it?’
He nodded.
‘How?’
‘Gas. There was an old gas tap in her room. She must have knocked it open and gone to sleep.’
‘Where were you?’
‘Melbourne. I had to see about a loan and stayed the night. She rang me at the hotel. Cheery. Chatty. After the call I couldn’t find my sleeping pills but I stayed put. Best not to drive at that hour. I told myself it was nothing.’
‘She had them?’
Mr Willoughby shrugged.
‘I only know what the police told me. The gas would’ve rendered her unconscious. She would never have known she was choking.’
He drained his tumbler and flicked it into the centre of the table.
‘What caused the fire?’
‘They think she put clothes on an old, faulty electric bar heater. By the time they started smouldering she was most likely dead. The medics all agreed. She never felt a thing. A farmer a few kilometres away claims he saw the lot go up. But he’s a worse drunk than me and a liar from birth, so who knows. Newspaper carried it as an accident.’
Mr Willoughby pulled the glass back and filled it to the brim, standing as if about to retire. He stood there a moment, in two minds.
‘I never told the police, but when I came down here to this shack, the place had been tidied up ready for me and there was a swag rolled out in the back room. I found a note inside. She wanted me to start over. Build a new house by hand, fill it with a new family. I’m yet to get started but she wrote down exactly what it should look like.’
I felt incredibly guilty, listening to this without explaining my role in things. ‘You said you wanted information from me. What do you want to know?’
He waved me off. ‘We’re too drunk now.’
The following morning I sat on the edge of my bedding, collecting up scattered, unsettling recollections of the night past. I had not felt myself drunk climbing into the sleeping bag, nor when crying into the pillow, but now my head throbbed, my mouth was parched and I felt a familiar nausea in the pit of my stomach, a churning that threatened to swell into a wave at any second. Angry with myself for not having told the truth
when I had the chance, I pulled a towel from my bag and set out for the bathroom. The shack was chilly. There was no way to escape the cold breeze which swirled down the hallway with the peculiar aimlessness of a bored teenager, meeting with even colder air when I opened the bathroom door. I yanked the creaky, narrow window shut, noticing the morning outside was all fog. Grey and thick, it had draped itself across the farm. Trees were black and skeletal, and whatever animals there were seemed intent on observing a short silence.
A tacky plastic gauge on the wall read six degrees. Nevertheless I showered and, shivering, climbed back into the previous day’s clothes.
To my surprise, Mr Willoughby had cooked me an English breakfast which we both ate in silence. The static-prone radio was tuned to ABC talkback, the volume low. I heard only snippets about the Beatles’ first Australian tour before he cleared the plates and put them in the sink. Clicking the radio off, he coated the dishes with detergent.
‘So, what will you do? Will you go back to Tokyo?’
I thought of the last time I ate breakfast with this man, of Tilly, the tail-light and her telling me she had planned to break up with me on the platform. I had no idea where I would go.
‘Maybe,’ I said, watching him run cold water over the oily plates. Even with detergent it sheered off, hardly breaking the grease. He washed each plate in turn then, picking up a tea towel only to toss it aside with a tired sigh, spun to face me. I sat dead straight. His voice, when at last it came, was surprisingly soft—gentle, even—but I remained determined to answer everything he asked directly and honestly. I owed him that much.
‘Why did she come home early?’
‘I cheated on her.’
He only nodded. ‘Did she say goodbye?’
‘No.’
‘She left without saying a word?’
‘Yes.’
After that, silent, he started on the drying, taking enormous care with each plate while I sat debating whether or not to stay still, help or make my excuses and leave. He did not seem angry. Sad, but not angry. The last plate took him an eternity.
‘Get your bags and I’ll meet you outside,’ he said, setting it down. ‘There’s a midmorning train back to the city.’
‘Okay.’
‘Bring it all out to the ute.’
‘Listen, I’m sorry.’
‘There’s no point in telling me you’re sorry. I’ll meet you outside.’
There was nothing left to say. I collected my belongings and started through the thick fog, headed for the ute. Mr Willoughby was in the driver’s seat, alternately wiping condensation from the windshield and trying to start the motor. When the engine refused to turn he hit the steering wheel with the palms of both hands and swore. He kept hitting, kept swearing, the ute bouncing slightly, suspension creaking. Blunted words thudded against the closed windows and I looked away, wanting to give him privacy. He seemed not to know I was there. Against the shack, near the front door, I noticed the Japanese flowers. They were best left there. And without a word I stared into the fog— the world a black and white silent film—certain, given time, I could find my way.
I travelled from this silent film into a colourful, cataclysmic storm, complete with lightning and thunder like wobbling sheets of aluminium the size of the sky. The rain from this storm drenched me in the course of walking from the train station to Celeste’s house. I was pleased to get indoors, to have a long, hot shower and sink down in front of the television.
I watched it without taking much in—something about getting bogged vehicles out of sand, a church service, then parts of a local football match. I closed my eyes and pictured Tilly sitting beside me, her hair short, her smile restrained.
‘It’s so odd, but I can’t wait to get back,’ I had her say.
I retired to my room and lay down on the western-style futon bed with a book titled Kings and Queens of England and Greater Britain. It kept me occupied for a few minutes before my thoughts began to skip. I could not stop it happening. First I thought of Mr Willoughby. The man seemed unlikely to start over. His Catholicism ought to have helped him but I doubted it would. Then I thought of Tilly. I wanted to warn her that he was drinking again and apologise for the killing of the cats. I stood up. I sat down. I missed her. I felt like speaking aloud, speaking directly to her. I wondered if there was any chance she could hear me, any chance she could simply have slipped into another room as the Henry Scott Holland poem insisted, but there was no other room, no heaven. Far away a car alarm sounded and was silenced, and it occurred to me that I would probably want to speak to Tilly for as long as she lived inside me, malformed—or more likely romanticised—by faltering recollection. I rolled over to shut her out, but again pictured her with short hair.
Finally I sat with my back against the door and thought of my father. What a diet of sanctified fairytales he had raised me on. And even now, when I most needed them, they were useless. Yet I did not feel anger towards him. Instead, oddly, I recalled the afternoon he met with the principal regarding Wang. I had always assumed my father arranged this meeting to request my expulsion. But I had not been expelled and now I was unsure, especially following my mother’s comments. Had he perhaps requested an exception? Clemency? Had he striven all along only to protect? It was hard to imagine, but plausible.
Standing, I noticed a Murakami novel on the shelf. The photo on its cover was from the collection in Mami’s hotel room. I reached for it, stared at it, then tossed it aside and crossed to the window. Rain zigzagged down, filling the pane.
Suddenly I needed to walk. I let myself out of Celeste’s, marched through the rain to my father’s apartment and lingered outside for a minute, thoughts still skipping around. Then I pressed on into the dripping night. In one street a long, quiet line of oaks stretched endlessly ahead, and I sat against the first one I came to and stared up through the canopy. The sky was dark and empty. I could not find the moon, stars or even a cloud.
I began to think about staying in Australia. It was my mother who put the idea in my head. She took me shopping with a credit card I had not seen before and spoke to me through a curtain while I tried on new jeans I could hardly do up.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘your father thinks you’ll move back.’
‘To Australia?’
‘No, back into the apartment.’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘I’m only telling you what he said.’
Having given up on the jeans and folding them as best I could, I pulled back the curtain. The store was busy. Gaijin—which is how I had come to think of Anglo-Saxons—browsed racks and chatted aimlessly in pairs or similarly dressed female clusters. My mother held up an almost purple T-shirt.
‘What do you think?’
‘No.’
‘Do you want to try another store?’
‘No. Let’s go.’
She replaced the T-shirt and sighed. ‘I’ve put you in a bad mood.’
‘No.’
‘I have. Talking all about your father and going to university.’
‘You hadn’t mentioned university.’
My mother smiled. ‘Hadn’t I?’ She turned serious again. ‘We worry a little is all. We’d like to see you with a degree because the two of us battled a sort of poverty all our adult lives and it doesn’t need to be that way. You can take steps to make sure you’re comfortable and uni is an obvious one. I don’t care what course you do. Aren’t you treading water in Japan? Maybe that’s a mean thing to say, but your father and I agree. It’s time to come home and start your life, your real life. In fact, your father said Anna—you know, the Livingston girl—has a spare room in a share house. He wasn’t keen on the idea, and perhaps it’s already filled, but wouldn’t you be happier there with people around you? You’ve been through a lot. Maybe you should slow down.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ I said, wondering how I could slow down any more than I had. I was not hurt, but more pleased—pleased the two of them had talked and had taken s
uch an interest in me.
Over time the decision to study more or less made itself. My mother and Celeste began to talk as though I would start in March. I spoke on the phone with administrative staff and academics, and wandered the windswept Monash University campus. Most students seemed to be on holiday. Those who were still around sat and drank coffee, studied or pasted up political posters. It was all very subdued.
Following school this scene might have appalled me, a continuation of study, but now it appealed. There was freedom in it and I was tempted to sign up, put my name down for something utterly useless. Something from the Arts department that, though I would never use it again, I could sink my teeth into and pass many a lazy day debating. Greek tragedy, Bolivian feminism, anthropology, dinosaur-hunting— what it was hardly mattered.
Then came Mami’s letter, and I never once phoned or went near a university again.
Dear Noah,
I had someone contact you about new housing. They spoke with Phillip who gave this address. I hope you don’t mind my using it now.
Letters aren’t easy things to write. Not for me, anyway. Whenever I write a letter it always ends up as a listing of facts, emotionless. This will too, no doubt, since there is so much to put down starting with this. I fucked Phillip. You’ll remember the day. Didn’t you think it a little odd, me coming out of the bathroom with wet hair?
Maybe you know. I think you knew as I stepped from the bathroom. So I’m writing this in explanation and also as an apology. I’m trying to write to everyone I’ve ever cared for and been cruel to.
I’ve not slept with many people—three (that I’ve chosen). I do other things, find other ways to please. I don’t really like sex, the position it puts me in, and I want to make it clear I didn’t plan to have sex with Phillip. When I felt his hand, his finger brush my inner thigh, I fully expected to laugh at him.
But I kissed him. I let one of his hands crawl up my back, up my neck into my hair, tugging at the roots. I let his tongue inside my mouth. I straddled him, pulled his pants down and had him remove my clothes. I helped him get his blind, stupid cock inside, felt his pig-headed fingers grope for my nipples. Looking back on it now I’d say it was his injury. He pretended he was enjoying it, pretended he was up to the task, but he wasn’t. The way I was doing it hurt him. I could tell. I could see it and adjusted in increments until he was in agony. I left him unfinished. He won’t get a letter. But you get this one.
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