She turns to the window as she dries her cheeks. In front of her house, looking up at the apostle birds, is the priest, Jan. Without too much thought, she walks to the front door and opens it, just as he has begun to walk on down the street. He is jingling some coins in his pocket. He turns his head and looks at her, lifting an imaginary cap. She notices that he is not wearing his collar.
Keith would not have liked such an exciting man.
Jim listens to the apostle birds in the tree next door as he finishes his ham sandwich. He feels comforted by the sound. It is the silence in nature that he has grown to be wary of. Birds won’t sing when there is impending violence in the air; when men are sneaking up on each other or shells are about to fall from the sky they know to fly to another place.
That was one of the first things that Jim was taught when he arrived in Vietnam. Out on a jungle track, he was answering a question from one of the other men about his life at home when he noticed that no one was listening anymore. They had stopped walking and opened their eyes wide. It made him so scared that he fell silent, the word about to leave his lips forgotten.
The birds had stopped singing.
Brent moved quickly to his side and pushed him into the cover of the large leaves surrounding the trail. As one, the other men followed. Brent put his fingers to his lips but no one needed that reminder.
Twenty feet away, six soldiers from the North walked down the trail towards them; they must have been just as aware of the silence of the birds, but had evidently decided to keep moving and trust that they would be safe. And they were. Happy not to engage them, Jim’s platoon let them walk on. The men didn’t set off again until the sound of birds returned, and they didn’t talk until they reached the relative safety of the main camp, where their voices had to be raised to be heard over the sound of the helicopters.
So the restlessness of the apostle birds now tells Jim that it is safe for him to continue on with his day. To celebrate finishing Patrick’s platform, Jim is wearing his favourite shirt that Mai picked out for him in Saigon. Mary ironed it for him. He found it hanging on the lounge-room doorknob. It is a deep red, too light to be crimson, too dark to be pink. He steps out the back screen door and pulls the hammer out of the holster of the nail bag as he walks over to the side fence. Yesterday he noticed that the rusted nails had loosened, and some of the wooden palings are listing. He is going to pull out the original nails and replace them with new ones that will keep the palings in place for another sixty years. He puts some nails head first between his lips and then pulls the first of the palings away.
A sulphur-crested cockatoo sits in the tree above the fence, head turned sideways, looking down at him. He is shocked to see a grey-haired man leaning on Val’s wall, carving out what looks to be one of the decorative roof supports around her house. The man’s face looks lined and wind beaten, and he retreats quickly back around the corner of Val’s house. He shows no emotion and Jim doesn’t feel at all compelled to engage him. It is a strange vision.
And it is enough to make him put off fixing the fence today. Just as he is stepping into the kitchen he hears a knock at the front door.
Mary is standing on the porch, looking back out towards the street. At her feet are some small calico sacks, a big paper bag with a department store name across it, and an empty cane basket. When she hears the door open she turns to face Jim. ‘I thought now might be a good time to finish cleaning out your mother’s wardrobe. Is that alright with you?’
‘Now is as good a time as any—come in. Shall I help you?’
‘Of course not. Why don’t you go down to the pub for a while? Or there is a seat free on Patrick’s platform if you prefer to go there.’
‘I might do both. Shall I leave you the key?’
‘What for? No, you go. And don’t rush back. This will take a while. That shirt looks good on you.’
‘Thanks for ironing it.’ Jim grabs his wallet from the windowsill where he left it last night, and finds himself stepping out the front door without any firm idea of where he is heading. At first it is an uncomfortable thought and he realises he hasn’t enjoyed this type of spontaneity in the three years since he was conscripted. It gives him a strange sense of freedom and, without giving the decision too much consideration, he heads across the street to number seven where Patrick is overseeing a small number of neighbours who have answered Mary’s request and come over to see the new platform. Patrick engages him as he comes through the gate and climbs the steps.
‘Good afternoon, Jim. Trains are running late today, I’m afraid. But Mary has made some tea and there is some of her coronation cake. And there is room for you to sit along here.’ He points to a spot on the bench between Megan and Debra. On the next bench, Eve, Rodney’s mother, and Bill Casey from number three sit watching the street. Each person has a cup of tea and a piece of cake. Jim leans into the ticket window and pours himself a cup and grabs a slice of cake. Everyone stays silent while he is doing this but as he lifts the cake to his mouth to try a little bit straight away, they resume talking. As he sits down he knocks Megan’s hand, which is holding her teacup.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he says, politely.
‘Don’t worry. It’s empty. How are you?’ she responds, just as formally.
‘I’ve no complaints. Something strange, though—I think I’ve just seen a ghost in my backyard.’ He rests the piece of cake on his knee and scratches his head.
‘You mean one of your . . . ?’ Megan begins nervously.
‘Oh no. This was one from next door. You know, Val’s place. I’ve never seen him before.’
‘I’m glad I’ve never seen a ghost. I don’t know what I’d do.’
‘No? You strike me as the sort of person who would be pretty good if something unexpected happened.’
‘Really?’ She looks at him. ‘. . . Was I?’
Jim nods. ‘Yes.’ But it is Mai’s question he is answering. Am I good for you?
Debra has been talking to Eve, but now she turns to greet Jim. ‘This is wonderful cake,’ she says. ‘Has Mary told you where she got the recipe from?’
‘No, where?’ Megan asks, speaking past Jim.
‘It came from the old woman who used to live in your house, Megan. She was Patrick’s grandmother and she had been making this cake since before the Great War.’
‘Really?’ says Megan, looking suddenly uncomfortable. Being this close to Jim made her think of the surprising event in her kitchen, and what with his talk of ghosts and now the old woman’s cake originally coming from that kitchen, she feels decidedly uneasy.
‘It is good cake,’ Jim adds, noticing Megan’s sudden discomfort.
‘Oh, hello!’ Debra and Eve say together as Jan Domak comes through the front gate.
‘Hello, ladies. Has anybody seen Peter, my neighbour?’ he asks, to no one in particular.
‘Not since he brought down the station signs,’ Jim says, with a mouthful of cake. He was trying to remember what he wanted to ask the reverend.
Jan puffs out his chest and turns to look at the street for a moment. Debra and Eve are looking at each other, suddenly aware that each has used the same tone of voice to greet the reverend, and beginning to suspect that the other may be feeling the same sort of tingle in their stomach. At the same time, they both look towards Jan who still has his back to them and continues to speak, this time as if he is addressing the street.
‘Mary says he has done this before. Apparently he wanders off sometimes. Well if you see him, come up to the church and let me know, the door is always open. Well, nearly always.’
He sweeps around to face the others.
Jim notices that Debra moves suddenly in her seat, making the bench squeak, and that Eve has leaned forward and is quite still, not breathing. She reminds him of a sniper about to fire a shot. Instinctively, he freezes too. He steals a l
ook at Megan, smiling quietly at the reverend, her mind evidently elsewhere.
Patrick walks to the end of the platform, consulting his watch. He returns it to his pocket, looks into the far distance, clasps his hands behind his back, and begins to bounce on his toes.
Jim stands too and places his empty cup on the tray by the door. When he turns around, he finds that the reverend has taken his seat between Megan and Debra. He suddenly remembers what he wanted to ask him. Are secrets the same as things never spoken? The three women and the large priest are now engrossed in conversation, all four leaning forward. Bill Casey has wandered off down the platform to ask Patrick something. Jim’s farewell is answered only by Megan and he walks to the front gate. Patrick turns from Bill and watches him leave. A willy-willy runs down the road; on a whim Jim follows it till it blows itself out at the end of the street. He continues on to the pub where he stands alone and looks at the reflection in the glass of whisky.
A South Vietnamese soldier told him a legend as they waited for a retrieval helicopter to find them. If the spirit of the person who stole your heart is around you then you will sometimes see their reflection in still water. A bath. A sink. A pond. A glass of whisky.
Jim looks for a while and then swallows the liquid in one mouthful.
He walks back to number ten, goes inside and instantly notices that the house feels different. First he is struck by the smell. His mother’s smell was always easy to identify. Lavender rose, she called it. Lately, it has been the strongest he has ever smelled it, as if she has just walked through the hallway on her way out shopping. But now there is no real sense of her presence anymore. Instead there is a new scent, one he recognises but can’t identify.
Mary peers out of the bedroom. ‘Feels better, doesn’t it?’
‘Sure does. What did you do?’
‘Just cleaned out her wardrobe and cupboard. There is nothing of hers left there anymore. And I lit some Chinese incense to keep her spirit from returning.’
Jim realises now why the scent is familiar—he remembers it from the town temples he walked past in Vietnam. ‘How do you know about incense?’ he asks Mary.
‘Patrick’s grandmother told me about it.’
‘Hello!’ another voice calls from the bedroom. Lukewarm. ‘I’m cleaning out your dad’s wardrobe. There’s nothing that you want to keep, is there?’
‘All I want is that tie that he never wore, the one with the hula girl on it.’
Lukewarm appears around the door, the tie draped around his neck. ‘I thought that you might want to keep it.’
‘Good on you.’
Lukewarm disappears back into the bedroom, and Jim takes in the new feeling of the house.
Mary steps out into the hallway. ‘Jim, are you going to be okay?’
He shrugs. For a moment he can’t find the words he wants to use. ‘In general? I’ve thought about it and I just don’t know. I can’t work it out. I figure I will be if I keep busy for a while.’
Mary takes a deep breath. It is the sort of breath taken when a tender subject is about to be broached and the other person’s reaction is unknown. She looks at him closely and says, ‘You know, hindsight is a dreadful thing sometimes. Looking back, I think your dad had become thinner and that he had rings under his eyes. He mustn’t have been getting much sleep. He had stopped talking to me and the other women in the street. He still talked to Patrick, though. Your mum said she was worried about him. The police asked all of us if we had noticed anything. At that stage we must have been in shock; I said I hadn’t.’
Jim says nothing. Mary’s eyes had shifted to his shoulder, but as she finishes, she looks back into his eyes. ‘The truth is, the only person around here who really notices anything is that boy up the apricot tree.’
Of course. ‘Rodney?’
Mary nods. ‘He sees everything and makes a note of it.’
The potential of this statement springs Jim’s mind to attention. ‘What did he tell the police?’
Mary is quick to answer because she has recognised something in Jim’s voice: the same still coldness that she heard when he asked about Peter. ‘Nothing. He was at school when they interviewed everybody.’
There is now a method in the way Jim speaks. He has become someone who knows how to get information quickly and efficiently. His emotions have sunk deep inside him. ‘So he must have been at school when it happened.’
‘Oh no. He had the day off. I remember seeing him sitting up there when I heard the gunshots.’
‘Well, maybe I should talk to him.’
‘Only if you want to find out.’
Jim looks at her. ‘What do you mean? Why wouldn’t I want to find out?’
‘He might just tell you something . . .’
‘Something I don’t want to hear? Like what?’
‘Like why a woman kept coming around when your dad was home alone.’
Jim takes a small step back. He blinks. ‘What do you mean?’
‘A woman was a regular guest in your house when your mother was away. That’s all. I don’t know who she was. I don’t know what they got up to. It was none of my business. I sometimes wanted to say something to your mother but I never did. I figured she must have known. She wasn’t stupid.’ Mary pauses, and adds gently, ‘She went away a lot.’
Jim is now looking beyond Mary’s shoulder, out the door. The apostle birds are still unsettled in their tree. ‘Yeah, she has a sister in Sydney.’
‘That’s right. I met her at the . . . funeral. She seemed to be a pleasant woman.’
‘Yes, she is. I suppose.’
Mary holds out her hands and lifts her shoulders. ‘Well, I don’t know. Maybe the boy in the tree holds the key to it.’
‘Maybe.’
‘You could ask him. Eve is his mother’s name.’
‘Yes, I just met her. She seems nice.’
‘She is.’
Jim is now looking around the hall as if searching for a chair to sit down on. As though unaware that he is speaking aloud, he continues, ‘I don’t want to scare him. A boy who sits in a tree all the time is probably a bit sensitive.’
Mary reaches out and clasps his hand. ‘I’d say so. But why don’t you talk to Eve and see what she says?’
Jim’s smile is pained. He looks down at her hand and says, ‘I’ll do that.’
Jim bides his time. He sees Rodney up in the apricot tree on two separate occasions before he decides to pay a visit. It is dinnertime at Eve’s house and Jim’s knocking disturbs them halfway through their chops and peas.
Eve looks a little concerned when Jim tells her he wants to speak to Rodney, but she leads him into the kitchen to where Rodney is sitting at the wooden table, his fork poised.
‘Rodney, this is Jim from up the road,’ Eve tells him.
‘I know who Jim is. He was the one who turned Patrick’s house into a railway station.’
‘That’s right, I did . . .’
‘And he was the one who crossed the street and gave that girl a piece of honeysuckle, then quickly walked back home and went inside.’
‘Yes. And I haven’t seen her since.’
‘She turned to talk to you when you were walking away and she has been in the street once more—not to see the strange man Peter but to look at the soldier statue in the park. She kept looking back at your house.’
‘Really? When was this?’ Jim says, amused but interested.
‘Hold on, I’ll get my books.’ Rodney pushes back the chair and jumps up.
‘What about your dinner, mister?’ Eve calls.
‘I’ll be straight back.’
‘His logbooks are in his room,’ Eve explains to Jim. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
‘Only if there is one.’
‘There is. The pot ma
kes two cups; it’s too hard only making one cup.’
Jim looks at her, unsure if she is making an opening comment about something deeper than tea. Jim knows that she is a widow.
She is immediately aware of his uncertainty and hastens to remedy it. ‘Rodney doesn’t drink tea.’
Jim smiles at her in gratitude. ‘Doesn’t he? I’d like to have one.’
‘Milk?’
‘Yes please, and no sugar.’
As Eve gets up, Rodney returns with five pocket-sized exercise books.
‘Are these your logbooks?’ asks Jim.
‘Some of them. They are this size because they are easiest to climb a tree with.’
Jim is struck by this. He spent a lot of his time in Vietnam up trees, and everything he carried had to pass exactly that test: whether it could be taken up a tree. Water bottles, pens, sunglasses, food. He is slowly discovering that the strange dark world he lived in over there has a lot more in common with the normal everyday world over here than he’d previously realised.
‘How long do you spend in the tree?’ he asks Rodney.
‘One hour in the morning. Two hours after school, until tea. Then another hour until it is dark.’
‘Comfortable?’
‘Very. There is a spot to rest my book and another branch to keep my pens on.’
Over there, Jim could never be so relaxed about the things he carried into position with him. If he dropped something from one of his perches, he would have to climb down immediately and recover it. If he couldn’t find it, he would have to move to another tree, sometimes as much as a valley away. Men searching for snipers look for clues on the ground more than in branches.
‘Have you worn away the bark where you sit?’
‘Yes I have. It is very smooth.’
‘And slippery, I bet. If you have a piece of coarse sandpaper in your pocket you can easily rough up the surface again, and that will stop you from slipping. Not altogether, but a little bit. And a little bit helps.’
Currawalli Street Page 23