Dreamland

by Gilling, Tom

  Nick had been waiting for this question. He’d been waiting for it from the moment he drove away from the service station in Nowra. If he was to create a future for himself as Kevin Chambers he would also need to create a past. Not just a date of birth but a family, a history of friends and lovers he could memorise and recite at will. He would have to immerse himself in the intimate details of an imaginary life. It was like an actor’s exercise, only Nick couldn’t afford to make a mistake.

  ‘My father drove a bus.’

  Homolka shrugged and offered Nick a cigarette, which he declined. ‘Dead now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And mother?’

  ‘She lives in Scotland. A village called Crail. They divorced.’

  ‘Brothers and sisters?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Wife?’

  ‘I’m not married.’

  ‘Live alone then,’ said Homolka, looking sympathetic but at the same time pleased. ‘Night shift no problem.’

  ‘I’ve got a dog,’ said Nick.

  ‘Dog okay,’ said Homolka. ‘Dog stay at home. Bark at burglars. You come home. Nothing stolen.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that.’

  ‘Not much traffic at night,’ said Homolka. ‘Roads empty. Work hard make good money. Save up buy taxi plates make more money. Buy house get family watch children grow up.’ He held out his fleshy hands as if these instructions had merely to be followed, like the steps in a cooking recipe, for the result to be achieved. And for a moment Nick wondered whether life really was—or could be—that simple. He thought of his own life and of the things he’d wanted that had been snatched away, or had turned out not be the things he wanted after all. Homolka patted him on the thigh. ‘Simple, yes?’

  The Pole walked across the lawn and issued some instructions to the old man on the stepladder. Then he returned and tossed Nick the keys to the taxi. ‘Come, Kevin Chambers,’ he said. ‘I give you test.’

  Later, having successfully delivered Homolka to the domestic terminal at Tullamarine Airport, and then to a hotel in Dandenong, and finally to a small house Homolka owned in Berembong Drive, Keilor East, Nick pulled up outside the honey-brick mansion in Wattle Grove. He switched off the engine and took out the keys and handed them to Homolka.

  ‘You drive too slow,’ said the Pole, opening his door. ‘But I give you job.’

  You read about transplant patients wanting to know whose organs they carry inside them: or wishing they didn’t know (the born-again Christian whose donor was an atheist; the Boer farmer whose new heart is black). You read about them in waiting rooms, in showrooms—and wonder what it must be like, to feel the beat of another person’s heart, to look through someone else’s eyes. Does the transplanted organ surrender its identity to the new owner, or does the previous owner live on inside the host?

  Nick found himself wondering more than ever what had become of Kevin Chambers. In return for taking his panel van Nick had left Chambers a couple of hundred dollars and the keys to a ten-year-old Toyota Camry, but Chambers had neglected to take either. Nor, apparently, had he reported the theft of his own vehicle. Perhaps he’d wanted the panel van to be stolen. A vehicle like that would have little resale value but it might still be insured for several thousand dollars. But that didn’t explain the boxes of groceries. Nowra was a long way from Canley Vale. It seemed obvious to Nick that Kevin Chambers had been preparing to go on a trip. Was he, too, running away from something?

  He began to feel a strange empathy for this man he’d never met, whose name and car and wallet he’d stolen. He’d thought of Kevin Chambers as an abstraction: a name and a date of birth, sixteen embossed digits on a credit card and some property left in the back of a panel van. But Chambers wasn’t an abstraction. Nor was he flesh and blood. He was something in between—a vague presence that sometimes felt so real that Nick could almost hear the sound of his breathing. There were nights when he imagined Chambers sitting in the back seat of the taxi as he drove home at 3 a.m. from Frankston or Craigieburn with the radio blaring and the heater turned up. Or traipsing behind as he walked the dog around Mayer Park. But when he looked around, there was nobody there.

  Now and then he detected a more palpable shadow: a dark-haired man in a fawn jacket who may or may not have been following him. But he never saw more than a fleeting glimpse— like a glimpse of Hitchcock in a Hitchcock movie: a bald fat man getting off a tram or buying a newspaper or earnestly studying an object in a shop window. In a city of four million strangers, Nick told himself, there must be dozens of dark-haired men with fawn jackets.

  On Friday afternoons at half past three Nick collected a pensioner named Goldsworthy (he’d never confided his first name and Nick had stopped asking) from a block of red-brick flats in Glen Huntly Road, Elwood and drove him to the Cricketers Bar at the Windsor Hotel, where Goldsworthy sat over a pot of Melbourne Bitter and watched the television and occasionally found someone to talk to until, sometime after nine o’clock, Nick came to fetch him. Goldsworthy was old and truculent: most weeks he didn’t say a word in either direction but sat with his gnarled and liver-spotted hands folded in his lap, frowning at the meter.

  Today being Friday, at 3.22 p.m. Nick was speeding along St Kilda Road en route to Glen Huntly Road. Although the late shift started at two o’clock, Nick usually took it easy for the first hour, knowing he’d be driving flat out for most of the night. He took his regular route along Barkly Street and turned left into Mitford Street at the intersection with Blessington.

  He had just accelerated from a roundabout when a pink bubble car pulled out ahead of him. Nick had time to brake but not to avoid the collision. The impact was slight enough for him to think no serious damage had been done, but when he got out of the taxi he found the road strewn with shards of broken plastic and fragments of rubber hose.

  The pink bubble car’s vented boot lay on the road, exposing the coiled entrails of its tiny rear-mounted engine. Nick watched in a kind of trance as a short, dark-haired woman in a peasant dress got out of the car, which had slewed diagonally across the road and was now pointing towards the driveway from which it had emerged moments earlier. At least, that was where it seemed to emerge from. In fact, though Nick could see what had happened, he wasn’t sure how it had happened. Had he collided with her—or had she collided with him?

  The woman was shaking her head. ‘What were you playing at?’

  Homolka had lectured him numerous times on the importance of never admitting fault for an accident.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Nick. ‘It was my fault.’ He felt her gaze on his skull. He was accustomed to it by now—a shaved head turned every stranger he met into a phrenologist. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘I learnt to drive in this car.’

  Nick stared at the roof. The painting had been done by hand: he could see the clumsy brushstrokes. There was a shawl over the back seat. For a second or two he thought he recognised the woman but she showed no sign of recognising him.

  ‘I didn’t see you pull out,’ he said.

  ‘It’s a fifty zone. You were going too fast.’

  Nick knew he hadn’t been driving at more than forty kilometres per hour when the accident happened, but what was the point of arguing? He shrugged and held up his hands. He’d already accepted guilt—what more could he say?

  It was less than two minutes since the accident and already a tow truck was on the scene: a low-slung, chrome-fronted predator drawn by the smell of engine oil. Nick could feel the gurgle of its V8 as it pulled up behind him. The tow-truck driver, a bear of a man in green overalls and Blundstones, took one look at the bubble car and said, ‘That’s a write-off, sweetheart.’

  ‘I’m not your sweetheart,’ said the woman.

  The tow-truck driver shrugged. ‘Which of youse is paying for the tow?’

  ‘He is,’ she said.

  The driver returned to his truck and go
t a clipboard and came back and handed it to Nick. ‘Name. Address. Insurance company.’ He looked sideways. ‘What about you, love?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘Am I taking you too?’

  ‘No.’

  The tow-truck driver lit a cigarette without offering them around. ‘If there’s anything you want,’ he said, ‘you’d better take it now.’

  She opened the door and snatched the shawl off the back seat.

  The tow-truck driver secured the mangled car with chains and pulled up his ramps and climbed into his cab. ‘So what’s it to be?’ he called out. ‘Is the lady coming with me?’

  ‘No,’ she answered. ‘She’s not.’

  They listened to the V8 clear its throat and instinctively stepped back as the tow truck roared away down Mitford Street.

  ‘I suppose we should be exchanging details,’ said Nick.

  ‘That’s what normally happens.’ She searched her handbag for a pen and paper. The accident, Nick couldn’t help feeling, had been as much her fault as his, but he felt the urge to reassure her that it was just a car and no one was hurt and everything was going to be all right.

  ‘I’ve got a pen in the taxi,’ he said.

  She followed him to the car and stood there while he telephoned Goldsworthy to say he’d be late.

  ‘My name is Alison Lake,’ she said. ‘I live at 99 Drummond Street, Carlton.’

  ‘Kevin,’ said Nick. ‘Kevin Chambers, 75 De Carle Street, Coburg.’

  They exchanged phone numbers and insurance details.

  ‘I’m supposed to be somewhere,’ she said. ‘Are you for hire?’

  ‘If you don’t mind sharing.’

  He told her about the old man in Glen Huntly Road—and had the odd feeling that she wasn’t listening, that she was nodding politely while thinking about something else. He used to do it himself with passengers who wouldn’t stop talking. Once you’d mastered the art of not listening you could tell when to nod simply by the tone of voice.

  ‘Where can I take you?’

  ‘Drop me at the Windsor. I can walk the rest of the way.’

  ‘Once I’ve dropped the old boy I can take you wherever you want to go. It’ll stop me feeling guilty about the accident.’

  ‘What makes you think I want you to stop feeling guilty about the accident?’

  Nick shrugged. ‘What if I promise to keep feeling guilty?’

  ‘Just drop me at the Windsor.’

  They drove for a while in silence. Nick could feel her watching him, though she looked away whenever he glanced in the mirror.

  ‘How long have you been driving a taxi?’

  ‘Not long.’

  ‘Is mine the first car you’ve written off ?’

  There was a half smile on her face—enough to make Nick think they might be getting on quite well, all things considered.

  ‘I guess it would be,’ he said.

  ‘I hope it’s not going to cost you a lot of money.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘What did you do before you drove a taxi?’

  ‘Oh,’ Nick began slowly, ‘this and that.’

  ‘Isn’t that what people say when they’ve just got out of prison?’

  ‘I thought they said, “I got these tattoos in Thailand.”’

  ‘Very funny.’

  Of course Nick had answered the same question dozens of times before, but never to anyone who mattered. He’d become adept at improvising colourful histories for the entertainment of Saturday night drunks and jetlagged passengers driving home from the airport. It was a challenge: to make the story interesting but plausible, to keep the details consistent and avoid contradicting himself. Not that most of them would have noticed if he had contradicted himself. They didn’t care—he was just a bald-headed man driving a taxi—and he didn’t care either. It wasn’t as though anyone was going to make an official complaint because they didn’t believe the cabbie’s life story. But something in the way she looked at him made him think that Alison Lake just might matter, that the story he told her was one he ought to remember, because she would remember it too.

  ‘I’ve been working in the west,’ he said. ‘Driving trucks mostly. I lived in Karratha for a while.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I kicked around up north.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Prawns.’

  ‘Eating them? Cooking them?’

  ‘Trawling for them. In the gulf.’

  ‘Perhaps I’ve eaten a prawn you trawled.’

  ‘I’m sure you’d remember. I always signed them. Just below the ear.’

  ‘I didn’t know prawns had ears.’

  Nick turned the corner into Glen Huntly Road. Goldsworthy was waiting, as usual, on the pavement. He registered Alison’s presence in the taxi but didn’t comment.

  Nick dropped the old man outside the Windsor Hotel and waited for Alison to get out. It surprised him how anxious he was to see her again. He sensed that she felt the same but wasn’t going to say it. One of them had to say something. He took a business card from the clip on the dashboard and passed it back between the seats. ‘If you ever need a taxi,’ he said, ‘Night work a speciality… unusual jobs welcome.’

  She stared at the card for a few moments before tucking it inside her bag. ‘I’ll call you,’ she said, ‘if there’s any problem with the insurance.’

  It was a couple of weeks before the phone rang. Nick was in the shower. He got out and tied a towel around his waist and stood dripping in the hallway. ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s Alison,’ she said.

  When he didn’t answer immediately, she said, ‘You ran into my car.’

  ‘Alison. Yes. Of course.’

  ‘I hope I’m not interrupting anything.’

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘I’d like to ask you a favour.’

  ‘What sort of favour?’

  ‘I need a new car. The insurance company has given me some money. I thought you might want to help since it was your doing.’

  He forgave her ironic tone. ‘Help how, exactly?’

  ‘By giving me your advice. About what to buy.’ She paused. ‘You must know something about buying cars?’

  It sounded suspiciously like a wind-up—a practical joke of the sort that Jerry Whistler liked to organise for the Star’s annual Christmas party. ‘A bit,’ he said, warily. ‘I wouldn’t call myself an expert.’

  ‘As long as you know more about cars than you know about prawns I’m sure we’ll get by. Prawns don’t have ears. They receive sensory information via nerves coming from muscles and the body wall that sense vibrations and small water movements. Prawns don’t have a nose either, but they have olfactory receptors that can detect chemicals in the water.’ She paused. ‘Is there anything else you want to know—or can it wait until we meet?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure it can wait. When do you want to look for the car?’

  ‘What about tomorrow morning?’

  Tomorrow was Saturday. Nick would be driving the taxi until 2 a.m. On Saturdays he rarely dragged himself out of bed before midday. ‘Tomorrow morning’s fine,’ he said.

  ‘I’d offer to pick you up, only…’

  ‘Your car was involved in an accident. I remember.’

  ‘There’s a car yard just down the road, near the markets. I saw a nice red car through the fence. We could see if it’s still there.’

  ‘Red?’

  ‘Dark red. Chianti red.’

  ‘Oh, that sort of red. What time?’

  ‘We could have brunch first.’

  ‘We could.’

  ‘Let’s meet outside Jimmy Watson’s.’

  ‘Lygon Street?’

  ‘So they do teach you your way around?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Is half past ten too early?’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  Nick put the phone down and walked into his bedroom and stared at the IKEA clothes hanger. There was nothing on it that he really wa
nted Alison to see him wearing. An iron would have widened his options, but not significantly. Driving a taxi was a stressful occupation, but it didn’t offer much in the way of exercise. Since giving up smoking he’d put on three or four kilos. He thought of the Italian linen jacket and three crumpled suits he’d left hanging in a wardrobe in Abercrombie Street. None of them would fit him now. It seemed appropriate that Nick Carmody’s old clothes shouldn’t fit Kevin Chambers.

  He caught the number 19 tram into the city and walked around the mall until he saw a plain white cotton T-shirt on a rack outside a shop. He looked at the price tag. Nick Carmody would never have spent so much money on a T-shirt—but Nick Carmody wasn’t buying it.

  According to his watch he was seven minutes early. It was 10.23 a.m. and Alison was already walking towards him, speaking to someone on her mobile phone. She was wearing a black top and leggings, with a cream cardigan tied around her shoulders. Her hair was pulled up in a French knot that was already coming undone. She looked surprised to see Nick waiting for her.

  ‘Very smart,’ she said, admiring the new T-shirt. ‘White suits you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She fingered the material. ‘Nice cotton. You’ll have to hand-wash it, of course. If you chuck it in the machine it’ll be ruined.’

  ‘I haven’t got a machine.’

  ‘That’s all right then.’ She paused. ‘What do you feel like?’

  ‘It’s your invitation,’ said Nick. ‘You choose.’

  They walked up the street until Alison found a place she liked.

  ‘You’ve done something to your hair,’ said Nick.

  ‘I’ve washed it.’

  ‘No, I mean—’

  ‘You mean I’ve tied it up in this sort of corkscrew thing that looks quite nice in theory except that it’s already falling apart because it hasn’t got enough clips to hold it together.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I meant.’

  She glanced at his naked scalp. ‘There’s a lot to be said for the low-maintenance option.’