by Marele Day
‘Rupert,’ said Nadia, ‘there’s a young lady wants to meet you. Must be your lucky day.’ He looked up from his meal.
‘G’day, Rupert,’ I greeted him. ‘How’re things?’
‘Not too bad thanks, nurse.’ The second time I’d been called nurse in the last two minutes. Did I look like one, or did they think they were in hospital? I declined his offer of half a slice of white bread.
‘Rupert, I’m wondering if you know my father-Guy. Guy Valentine.’
‘Guy?’ he said, ‘like Guy Fawkes?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘Short stocky bloke. Curly hair. Probably grey. He used to work for the newspapers.’
‘Journalist?’
‘Yes,’ I said with a glimmer of hope.
‘Sorry, nurse, never heard of him. Will you let me buy you a cuppa?’
He was the perfect gentleman, I didn’t like to refuse, but if I had cups of tea with all of them I’d drown. ‘Thanks, Rupert, another time maybe.’
‘Can I take you to dinner?’
‘How can you be thinking about dinner when you haven’t finished lunch?’ I joked.
I moved on. The story was the same all round—no-one knew him, not by that name anyway. A couple of them asked their mates who shook their heads, but mostly they simply answered the questions as if they were filling out a form. The first lot of lunchers had finished now and were getting up to make way for those waiting on the other side of the room.
It was futile, like counting grains of sand. I had the feeling that Nadia was getting edgy. I was taking up time, being a disturbance to the routine. ‘Thanks for your help,’ I said finally.
‘Sorry there wasn’t a better result,’ she commiserated.
I found my own way back to the reception area, nodded briefly to the women on the desk and headed out the door. There were fewer men standing round now. They were probably off somewhere having a siesta. Except the man with his arm in the sling. He was back out here, propped up in the same place he’d occupied before. He appeared to be sleeping. But I soon found out he wasn’t. At the very moment I walked past he stuck out his leg. I very nearly tripped over it.
‘He always reckoned he had a daughter,’ he said lazily.
I stopped in my tracks. ‘Pardon?’
‘We never believed him but.’
‘Never believed who?’ I asked, hoping I sounded casual.
‘Shakespeare. That’s who you’re looking for, isn’t it?’
My nose started quivering like a bloodhound on the scent of something. ‘Are you a mate of his?’
‘Maybe. What’s it worth to you to find out?’
‘What do you want?’
He looked me up and down as if deciding what I could afford to pay. ‘You can start with a six pack.’
‘No problems.’
Using his good hand to help himself up, he moved from a sitting to a standing position. ‘Let’s go, baby.’ His gait wasn’t as smooth as his patter but I was prepared to go to the end of the earth with him. Well, at least to the end of the street.
We went further than that, however. Round the corner, across the road and up to a pub on William Street. He’d led me there but once we’d arrived he didn’t want to go in. ‘My money’s no good in there,’ he said.
‘But it’s my money,’ I reminded him. Nevertheless he still didn’t want to go in. ‘Anything in particular?’
‘Yeah, I’ll go for those Colds.’
Very trendy, I thought. I went into the minute bottle shop, pressed the bell to get the barperson’s attention, all the while keeping my eye on my new friend. I needn’t have bothered, he wasn’t going anywhere. He was hanging out for those Colds. Three minutes later I was back on the street with the six pack.
‘What are you going to drink?’ he asked.
‘You’re not going to drink all of these yourself, are you?’
‘Too right I am,’ he assured me.
‘OK,’ I sighed, ‘I’ll get some more.’ I started back for the bottle shop.
‘Why don’t you make it a slab. It’s cheaper by the two dozen. I’ll hold onto those for you,’ he offered.
I moved them out of his reach. ‘I’ll look after them,’ I said authoritatively. Once he had the six pack he’d be off like a shot.
I went back in and rang the bell again. The same barperson appeared. His eyes were close together and he had a long drooping nose. The combined effect was that of an owl. But he didn’t seem to register any surprise that I was back so soon.
‘I wondered if I could return these and buy two dozen instead.’
‘No worries,’ he said. His accent revealed him to be a New Zealander, and fairly recently arrived. I was dying for him to say six pack but he managed to avoid it. He worked out the difference in price then did something complicated with the till.
Out I came again, carrying the slab. I hoped we weren’t going to be walking a long way. He didn’t offer to carry it for me but I guess a man with his arm out of action can be excused. ‘Let’s go and sit somewhere and drink in a civilised fashion,’ I suggested.
‘I know just the place,’ said my friend.
We crossed back over William Street and went down backstreets of Woolloomooloo similar to the ones that led to the hostel. But we didn’t go back to the corner that I assumed to be his ‘spot’.
‘This’ll do,’ he announced. It was a piece of footpath under the Eastern Suburbs railway line, in roughly the area where I’d seen the two boys joyriding between carriages. It was shady under there and presently unoccupied but judging by the general smell, it was a regular watering hole.
He sat down, leant against the graffitied wall and patted the concrete beside him. ‘Well, are you going to sit down or not?’
I sat down and placed the slab in protective custody between my feet. I wrestled one bottle away from its mates and held it out to him.
‘Rip the top off for me, will you, baby?’ I didn’t know how much of this ‘baby’ business I was going to be able to take but I stuck with it for the moment. I twisted the top off and handed him the beer. He took a long cool swig of it, oblivious to the bit dribbling down his front. He gave a belch of satisfaction. ‘Cheers,’ he said.
I twisted the top off a second bottle and took a long cool swig myself. Without the dribble. It was refreshing, I could feel the bubbles going all the way down. I figured on beer one for hospitality, beer two preparing the way and beer three to get him going. I was hoping to get away with less myself.
‘I guess we’d better introduce ourselves if we’re going to drink together,’ I suggested.
‘Why?’ he questioned. ‘None of that’s important.’
I had a sinking feeling—the bloke was probably just a chancer. Listening to me asking questions in the hostel and working out how he might get a few beers out of it.
‘How am I going to put you in my little black book if I don’t know which letter to file it under?’
‘I’m ready for my second, thanks, baby.’ I passed him his second beer. Three beers, that was the limit. If I didn’t have something after three beers I was leaving. And taking the rest of the beer with me.
‘S. You can put me under S. For Sebastian. But everyone round here calls me The Doctor. Sorry to say, I’m presently without a phone. But you know where to find me. Cheers.’ He took a swashbuckling swig of his second bottle. ‘You don’t look much like him,’ he said suspiciously. ‘How do I know you’re not an imposter?’
I liked that touch—him thinking I was the imposter. A crafty old bugger if ever there was one. I pulled out the photo of Guy. Young and looking very spruce. Wavy hair in a fifties quiff, the short snub nose that David inherited, dressed in a dinner jacket and stiff white shirt. Cadet Journalist of the Year, 1959. I held onto it while Sebastian looked on, silently nodding.
‘Well I’ll be buggered,’ he said softly. He looked away from the photo, down at the ground, as if remembering his own past, h
is other life. ‘No,’ he repeated, ‘you’d hardly recognise him.’ He jerked suddenly. ‘Fuckin’ bastards. The lot of youse.’ Another swig of comforter. Ah yes, that felt better now, the bastards had retreated into the distance. Lost in the alcoholic haze.
I took another swig myself. No matter how many times I reminded myself that this photo was taken all that time ago, it was still the way I saw my father. I looked at the man beside me. Skinny legs with sores on them, broken arm, eyes sunk back so as to be almost indistinguishable in a face of dirt-engrained wrinkles, brushed with beard stubble. A tooth missing, his body odour heavy with the smell of alcohol. Take a good look, Claudia, your father is no longer the man in the photo—he’s this one sitting beside you.
Sebastian’s head started a slow motion journey to his chest, as if he was nodding off to sleep. Just before it got there he jolted it up. ‘Instead of gawping at me, why don’t you make yourself useful and pass me another beer?’ he said.
I hadn’t realised I was staring, it was more that I was lost in thought. I felt suitably chastened. The man had his dignity and I’d just affronted it. I passed him another beer.
‘Have one yourself,’ he insisted, ‘go on.’ He nudged me with his broken arm, the sling moving up and down like a wing.
In spite of everything I couldn’t help smiling. Another one wouldn’t do any harm. Besides, I reminded myself, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t been practising.
He lifted the beer to his mouth. Beneath his beard I saw the Adam’s apple move as he swallowed. I looked away, at the house across the street, in case he thought I was staring.
‘We were mates at one time, good mates. Before the fight. Must be going on for ten years now. We used to kip in that park at Rushcutters Bay. You know the one I mean?’
I took a swig of beer then turned slightly in his direction. Trying to appear casual. ‘Yeah, I know the one.’
‘Well, one morning he comes at me with a broken bottle, accuses me of rolling him in his sleep. But I hadn’t been there at all that night. I’m sorry to say I hadn’t been able to make it home. The police had picked me up. The usual—drunk and disorderly. I’d spent the night in the hostel. It’s raining like buggery so they let us stay there a bit longer but eventually it was time to go. So I’m coming back the next day feeling pretty good. The rain had eased up, I had breakfast in my belly, a flagon of sherry under my arm.
‘But there’s no sign of him. I thought he must have gone out looking for breakfast himself. It’s harder to find in bad weather, people don’t go to the parks, there’s no food in the bins. So I’m ready to settle down with the flagon and then I see him sitting under a tree. Sitting there shivering. And I says, “You mad bastard, what have you done with your coat?” Because he’s not wearing it. First time I ever saw him without his coat on. Give us another, baby. All this talking, it fair makes a man parched.’
I looked at the slab. We’d made more dents in it than I thought. I must have been drinking my fair share, because I was even warming to the idea of being called ‘baby’.
‘Claudia? Is that you?’
Oh shit. I’d recognise that voice anywhere. It was Janet. One of the ex-chorus girls who’d twittered around at Mina’s wedding. Shit. Of all the people who could catch me sitting under a railway line drinking a slab of beer with a dero, it had to be Janet. Of all Mina’s friends she was the biggest gossip. I may as well have made an announcement on the evening news. I kept looking down at the ground.
‘Claudia?’ The voice was closer now, almost upon us.
‘Hello, Janet,’ I said tiredly.
‘I was just taking a short cut home, I thought it was you.’
‘Yes, it’s me all right.’
She was waiting for an explanation. But I was under no obligation to give her one. She stared at Sebastian, doing something peculiar with her nose, as if trying to pull it back into her face. Sebastian slowly raised his head to gaze at this apparition. From the toes of the Nikes, the length of the gaily patterned tights, right up to the sunhat. ‘Hello, baby,’ he greeted her, ‘want a beer?’
‘No thank you, not during the day,’ she said stiffly.
She hung around, still waiting for me to give her an explanation of what I was doing here, drinking in public with a derelict person. But the only sound coming from me was a satisfied ‘ah’ as I took another mouthful of beer. ‘Well, I’ll be going then,’ said Janet. ‘I can see you’re busy. Give my love to your mother.’
No need for that, I thought, she’d be on the phone to Mina as soon as she got home. Maybe she wouldn’t even wait that long. There had to be a public phone around here somewhere.
Off she trudged, her ample bottom wiggling in the tights. Before she turned the corner she looked back. I held my drink up. Cheers. Sebastian, I noticed, had taken advantage of the situation to help himself to a new one. It was a pity the momentum had been broken, because it took another two beers before I was able to get Sebastian back to where he’d left Shakespeare sitting without his coat on.
‘I knew something must have happened, he never went anywhere without that coat. He wore it twenty-four hours a day, slept in the thing. I took the flagon over to him. He had a drink then he said: “Some bastard’s stole my letters, Doc. All my letters.” He had scraps of paper he’d keep in that coat. And pens. He had a beaut collection of pens. Most of them didn’t work but they looked nice. They weren’t really letters, he never posted any of them. He’d write things down on a scrap of paper, fold it up and put it in his pocket. What a mad bastard carrying all that paper around. Strike a match near him and he’d go up in smoke.’ Sebastian shook his head, thinking of the memory.
‘Who took his coat?’
‘Well, he thought I did at first, that’s why he was dirty on me. Then he said it was the devil. He’d slept in the tunnel that night, the tunnel under the road, because of the rain. There’s a ledge you can sleep on as long as you’re careful you don’t roll over and end up in the drink,’ Sebastian guffawed. ‘Shakespeare always used to reckon there were devils in there anyway, he’d only sleep in the tunnel when it was really raining cats and dogs. So he’s sleeping in there and he hears these noises. He thinks at first it’s me so he calls out, “Doc?” Then someone hits him, knocks him out stone cold. Then the next thing he knows he’s propped up under the tree and he doesn’t know how he got there.’
‘What happened after that?’
‘Well, we kind of went our separate ways. I know he got Mrs Mason to fix up his Social Security form—that would have been in his coat as well.’
‘Mrs Mason?’
‘She used to work at the hostel. Not any more though. They’ve got all these new birds down there.’ He reached for another bottle and managed to get the top off it with no assistance from me, the crafty old bugger. Holding it in the hand with the sling and opening with the other. ‘Cheers,’ he said.
‘Cheers.’
‘He’d never go back to that place, you know. Never went back. I stayed away a few nights but then I went back. Kipped there for years after.’
‘And now?’
‘Na, I give it away. I’ve got another little place, all to myself. It wasn’t really the same without Shakespeare.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘Last I heard he was up Surry Hills way,’ he said, as if Surry Hills was miles away in the country, instead of about two kilometres. Still, I guess when you’re on foot and you stick to your own territory it may as well be on the moon.
‘Last you heard.’
‘Yep, last I heard.’
‘When was that? Recently?’
‘Depends what you call recent, doesn’t it? Couple of years ago.’
I didn’t remember my conversation with Sebastian verbatim, there were huge gaps which I filled in later to give it some semblance of coherency. What I remembered was the place, the coat, Mrs Mason, that something had happened to my father the night he ‘died’. Drunk as I was by this stage I kept saying these things over and over in m
y mind because I’d need them for later, when I was sober.
I stayed on to finish the slab with Sebastian—at least I think we finished it. I remember doing some dancing. I remember that in particular because I’m positive his arm came out of the sling. Then it got dark and for some reason we had this bright idea of going back for another slab. I remember the bright red traffic lights at William Street, then the bright blue light of the police car. And I remember telling the young officer that I was a PI and that I was doing undercover work. Fishing around for my ID and not being able to find it. ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘and I’m Matlock.’ I don’t know what possessed him to say that, he was much younger than Matlock.
I remember the bright city lights, Sebastian and I sitting in the back of the police car being driven around like royalty. And then standing in a place with lots of noise. I think I was making most of it. The cops handing over forms and someone—a nurse?—asking me my name. I started to tell her about the undercover work but she wasn’t interested. Sebastian was there and then he went somewhere else and I was looking at a room. Proclaimed Area. I’d seen that this afternoon, in the Matthew Talbot Hostel. It was just the same only the colours were different and instead of men on the beds there were women. No way I was going to lie down there, I’d never slept in a room with more than one bed in it in my life and I wasn’t going to start now.
‘Where … am … I?’ I demanded, in a slow, controlled voice, the sort of voice school principals use when they come across a nest of children playing with matches.
‘It’s all right, calm down,’ I was told.
‘Ring a cab for me,’ I said imperiously. ‘One passenger. Going to Balmain.’ At least I knew not to try and drive my car. Come to think of it, I couldn’t remember where my car was. My vision homed in on a phone. I lunged towards it and tapped out the cab company number that I thought I knew off by heart. Why wasn’t anyone answering? A woman approached. Ah, help at hand.
‘Do you have a home to go to?’ she asked.
‘Of course.’ I reeled off the name of Jack’s pub.
‘You live at a pub, eh?’ They didn’t seem to believe me.