The Body in the Clouds

by Ashley Hay

  “I’m . . . I don’t . . .”

  “You’re Joe Brown? Your wife said you’d be here. Well, I’m sorry, we tried to get in touch. Mrs. Brown, she’s been fighting this terrible flu—she’s over in the Mater—and they’ve been passing little Grace around us neighbors. My name’s Caldwell, three down; we moved in after you went away last time. Must have been just before Gracie was born—four years ago now? Coming on for five?”

  “I think there’s . . .” Ted was peering at the man’s face, the man’s mouth, as he spoke, trying to make sense of the words—or trying to make them say something else. From the corner of his eye, he saw the sun catch the little girl’s hair so that it shone gold, and as he looked down towards its brightness, she looked up, quickly, shyly, and she smiled.

  “This must all feel awfully strange, but the doctors . . . they say Mrs. Brown . . . well, you wouldn’t have met little Grace before, would you? But it’s good to have you home, Mr. Brown. And I’m sure it’ll give Joy the boost she needs.” He touched the brim of his hat in a fake salute. “You’re a man with some gift for living, Mr. Brown. Your wife told us about your fall up there—” his hand vaguely raised towards the famous bridge “—and anyone who could get through years of flying for the Poms, well . . .” He nudged the little girl forward towards Ted. “She’s a good girl, this one, and glad her daddy’s home.” A too-hearty smile. “Get everything back to normal now.” And he tipped his hat again.

  All the sound had been sucked out of the world—or out of Ted’s head at least. He heard himself saying small things about the capabilities of doctors, about the prettiness of the little girl’s smile; heard the man saying small things about getting to work and having them all over for a cuppa when Joy was better, was home. Then he saw the man walk away, saw the little girl’s face looking up at him, saw a bird curl and dive again out over the water. It must be some trick, some surprise—the little girl was fussing with the ribbon in her hair. And what had Joy told this bloke, that Ted was Joe, that Joe was the man, the one man, who’d dived and survived? That Joe had spent his war flying, not just filling and fixing those planes? That Joe had come home?

  The morning sun disappeared behind a cloud, illuminating its edges: Ted could see a ship in its big white shape—wondered if the little girl might see it too. “So, Grace.” Grace. The little girl smiled, sat down, and he sat down next to her.

  He could feel the watch ticking in his pocket, tapping at his flesh. Say something; say something. The man in the suit had reached the road—turned back and waved. Grace, polite, waved back, then turned and took Ted’s hand. “Mum says you know how to fly,” she said, looking up, and he saw she had blue eyes, wide, clear, blue.

  All right, he thought. He pulled the watch out again, its flat silver back glinting in the sun—just on midday. “Would you like to walk across the bridge, Grace?” he asked, squeezing her hand and feeling it squeeze back, warm. He had no idea where his words were coming from, or what he might—or should—properly say next. “Walk over and see your mum? I could tell you a story while we went—tell you a story about making this bridge. What do you reckon? Want to hear it?”

  She squeezed again, and smiled. “I’ve never walked up in the air there before. Mum always said we’d do it when you came home and you’d show me where you flew. But is it high? Will I be scared?”

  “Come on, then,” he said. “It’s great being up in the air, on top of the world. Don’t you want to see what happens?”

  Dan

  “THEY WALKED along Cumberland Street and up the stairs onto the bridge,” said Charlie. “Ted Parker made it look like he was tap-dancing up the stairs, and my mum showed off the way she could twirl so her dress flared out. He told me he wasn’t really sure what he should do, just knew that he should get to the hospital and see Joy. So they started to walk and he told her about building the bridge—about men hanging on with their toes while they climbed up, about cooking sausages on a shovel for lunch, going to the loo in a paper bag and watching it sail through the air and just miss a ferry. He said he just wanted to make her laugh; said she had a laugh somewhere between Joy’s and Joe’s. Halfway across he started the story of flying off the bridge, and she knew it better than he did, correcting his details and telling him he’d somersaulted at the top; down for three seconds; into the water; and then surfaced again . . .”

  “And how bright the daylight seemed when he came up,” said Dan. “That’s the bit I always loved. So much glare he had to squint to stop the rest of the city disappearing.” All the places he’d seen this happen—birds, sails, even figures could disappear on widely lit plains. Every time, he’d thought of Gramps. Every time, he’d thought it was magic: with enough light at the right angle, you could make a whole city disappear. Now, sitting in this first morning of being home, looking around at the harbor’s edge, so clear, so familiar, it occurred to him that the opposite might also be true, that every so often the light would touch something the right way—a slightly brighter beam, a slightly different angle—and you’d not only get some unexpected glimpse of it, you’d feel like you were seeing it anew.

  They sat there, eyes crinkled against the glare, imagining the little girl who was Charlie’s mother, the man who would become her grandfather, dancing across the grass, on their way up to the bridge.

  Ted Parker held the girl’s hand tight. He’d always been slightly scared of children, but the look on her face, he thought, half Joe, half Joy, and shining with the moment: that she’d known her father was coming home. And that she’d known her father was the man who could fly. She was smiling, skipping, taking a look at him every so often as if she wanted to make sure he was real. He caught her eye in one of the smiles, and watched it expand into laughter. Anything, he thought in that instant, I will do anything to keep you safe and smiling.

  He’d never felt so sure of a thing before.

  Their feet followed the line of the bridge, began to take the ups and downs of the hills on the other side. Ted wondered if he’d remember the way to the hospital, but the streets unfolded in front of him like a marked map. He hated hospitals, hated their sharp smell—more since he’d sat through the end with Joe—but when he felt Grace pull back as they neared the building he knew somehow that it was his job to make this easier for her. Light and easy.

  In the door, up the stairs. “Don’t worry,” he said quietly. “Everything’s fine—I’m here.” Saying it for himself as much as for her. He’d never held a child’s hand before—there was such trust, such confidence in it. Like holding Joy’s hand to the top of the bridge—and as he remembered this, they reached her bed. She looked diminished, sleeping under the taut white covers, and he began to sing, just gently, just quietly the words he and Joy had made up for his favorite Al Jolson song.

  “. . . just dancing on air, just dancing on air.”

  Grace was in his arms, her head snuggled against his shoulder. This is what I came home for, he thought distinctly. This is what I will do now.

  He settled himself in a chair, settled himself to wait as the sunlight danced around the room’s walls and the world and the day turned.

  “Sometimes, when I was away,” he whispered to Grace, “I thought I’d forgotten what your mother looked like.”

  And the little girl smiled and said, “But she’s beautiful, isn’t she?” And Ted nodded.

  “Sometimes, when I was away,” he whispered, “I thought I was forgetting all my stories.”

  “I could tell you, if you do,” whispered Grace. “I know them all.”

  Ted laughed. “I’m sure you do.”

  Joy stirred a little, her eyes still closed. He’d never seen her sleep before, Ted realized, and now she was down so deep that for an instant—now—and now—he thought she might have stopped breathing and he had to lean closer, closer, to pick up any slight movement she might make. Was she dreaming? Did she know they were there? He held Grace and felt her breath against his hand: she was sleeping now too. He didn’t dare move. Thr
ough the window, he could see the crest of the bridge’s curve, and he sat, and waited, and wondered what might happen next.

  It was afternoon when he woke, startled by a sound, a movement, so sudden that he thought for a moment he’d stepped from one dream into another. Grace fiddled with some pencils at his feet, and Joy’s eyes were opening slowly, and looking a little, and closing again. He saw their blink, their gaze, before he was awake enough to remember where he was, what was happening.

  “Joe?” she said at last, and Ted felt himself shudder back into his own time and place.

  “I’m here,” he said, reaching out to smooth the sheet across her shoulders. “It’s all right, I’m here.”

  “I knew you’d come,” she said, eyes closed again, smile soft. “I wrote to Ted to bring you home, and I knew he would.”

  “Ted would do anything for you, Joy,” said Ted. From the other beds came sounds and movements, but Ted was sure there were only three people in the room, possibly in the world—himself, Joy, and Grace. He watched as the little girl crawled up onto the bed, snuggled herself in between her mother’s arm and body.

  “She likes this,” said Joy, kissing her fast on the top of her head as Grace giggled and beamed.

  “Good,” said Ted. “I can do that.”

  “And she likes tomato on her toast in the mornings.”

  Ted nodded.

  “And she likes stories, so you’ll have no problem with—” The end of the sentence disappeared into a hacking cough that sounded as if it might turn her inside out. But she pushed away the water Ted held out. “Think it’s too late for that,” she said, and he was sure, from the look, the smile she gave him, that she knew exactly who he was. “It’s all right,” she said then, patting his hand. “I knew you’d come—you’re the man who can fly.”

  And Ted smiled, held her hand, and watched as she slid back into sleep. All right, he thought. Well, all right. I’d better get Grace home. And as they turned to leave, he leaned forward and kissed Joy’s forehead—perhaps he’d always wanted to.

  “It will be lovely falling in love with you again,” he whispered.

  “She only lived a few weeks,” said Charlie now to Dan, “and then, said Gramps—said Ted Parker—who was going to take care of my mum after that? So he took her on, still answered to his own name but also answered to Joe’s if people used it instead. He was pretty defensive about that, said that half the blokes who worked here had been working under two or three names, said that he’d been reading about soldiers who ended up having three names and four lives, said that even Mr. Kelly had been Vic and Vince and Roy. Didn’t seem like such a big thing, he said.

  “And he kept going back over the story of your dad walking into the west, making his name up as he went, on a letter here, a document there, and that was all there was to Kopek, he said, and none of us had ever minded.”

  Ted Parker, buying a bunch of white roses in the supermarket, had turned to Charlie and said out of nowhere: “I did love your grandmother—she and Joe, they were my family too. And I did mean it when I said it’d be something to fall in love with her again. I thought I might have had that chance. But still, but still . . .” Handing over the money for the flowers, taking a gulp of the air around them and shaking his head at their want of perfume. “Your mother and I, we didn’t do too badly together; she never knew, if that’s what you’re wondering, and it meant the world to me that she told me, before she got sick, what a good father I’d been.”

  The main thing, her grandfather had said, was that it had never occurred to him that he wasn’t Grace’s dad, or Charlie’s grandfather, and that they weren’t a family. “And he did make a joke about it one day,” said Charlie. “Said he’d always wondered if I’d rather have been a jazz player than a cartoon character.”

  “Charlie Parker, Charlie Brown,” said Dan. “I suppose that would’ve been all right either way.” He squeezed her shoulder with a hug. They were walking back from the bridge, down towards the quay, the rows of wharves, and the pavement was thick with tourists.

  “Let’s go up by the mouth of the old stream,” said Charlie, steering him through the crowds and across to the wide forecourt whose fountain marked the place where the settlement’s first, quickly exhausted stream had splashed into the harbor. There were the birds, the frogs, the echidnas, the lizards in bronze; a curling curve suggesting rocks; a curling curve suggesting leaves. “Do you remember how Gramps used to say they’d been peeled off one- and two-cent pieces,” she said, “and that’s why they were all brown?” She leaned forward, her fingers just touching the very top of the water. “It must have been so pretty with the ferns and the she-oaks and the lilies along here.” She flicked drops of water onto the fountain’s surface, watching them catch the light and disappear. “What do you think—about Gramps? What do you think about it, Dan?”

  Dan slid his hand along the bronze skin of a goanna, his fingers registering the hard metal that formed it while his eyes followed the texture of its skin, scaly, and a little baggy, but certainly reptilean. There was nothing like this in England, he thought. They must have looked monstrous. He wondered how long it had been since a goanna wandered through this part of town. He wondered what he wanted to say to Charlie.

  “Well,” he said at last, “I’m not really one to talk about appropriating—sometimes when I tell the story, I say it was my grandfather who flew.” He watched her carefully, but she barely reacted, her fingers still toying with the water. “We all borrow things, don’t we? Nudge the truth a bit now and then. But he was a good grandfather—for me, as much as for you. And there’s no harm in it, is there? It doesn’t change anything we think about him. It doesn’t change how much we loved him, does it?”

  “Love,” she said, her own hand molded around the smooth bronze stone on which Dan’s goanna sat. “We never talk about that, do we. I don’t mean”—fast, across a kind of fear that fell on his face—“anything soppy. I just mean family, us that way. I missed you, Dan, I really missed you. I’d do things, and see things—stuff happens, you know, and there are certain people you want to tell about it.”

  The things he might have told her. Dan thought of random moments with Caro, of holidays and nothing weekends, of flying over the Matterhorn, of the light under the Waterloo Bridge and the way that one little cloud had shone, illuminated, on his birthday.

  “I should’ve rung home more, talked to Mum more, talked to you—I meant to. I was always promising myself I would.” The water around his fingers now felt silky; it would be lovely, he thought from nowhere, if it was big enough to submerge him. He could lean all the way forward into it. He could wash away his tiredness, wash away the flight, wash away all the things he’d meant to do or say and hadn’t. It felt like that kind of space. “It’s not even that you get busy,” he said. “It’s just—it was never quite—never quite the right time. And I always knew I could just fly home if I wanted to.” He shook his head. “Poor old Joe.”

  “Poor old Ted,” said Charlie quietly. She was very still, her only movement her fingers flicking at the water again. Her grandfather: their best friend, the person who had filled them up with stories and adventures, who’d taught them, if nothing else, that it was perfectly possible for them to fly—however they wanted to take that. She’d done better than him at that, thought Dan; photography against banking wasn’t much of a contest. Gramps’s mantra: “Anything you want to do, anyone you want to be.” They hadn’t realized how literally he knew that could be taken.

  And Gramps had been right to invoke Dan’s own father: fleeing a country, picking a new name, ending up in a life that held his mum, him, in a whole other piece of the world. When he was young, it had never really mattered to Dan who else his father might have been, and as he got older, his dad dead years already, he hadn’t wanted anything other than to hold on to what little he remembered. His mother had nodded. Gramps had nodded. As he’d said to Caro, he’d happily take his mum to the place his father had come from, if she ev
er wanted to go. But he wasn’t that interested in knowing more himself.

  “So I figure,” said Charlie suddenly, “that it’s like the Second Coming—those crazies waiting for Jesus to come through the harbor’s heads. The way Gramps told the story, sometimes it was just a story, sometimes Gram had been there, had seen it happen herself. Sometimes Gramps had been there too—and sometimes it was just something he’d heard someone talking about that might happen one day.”

  Her face scrunched up a little—Dan thought it was against the glare of the sun, then saw the tears on her cheeks. “I know it doesn’t matter,” she said, “I know it shouldn’t change anything. But I did mind about the flying. I minded that it wasn’t him, that he hadn’t done that. I started imagining these little threads running away from his words—him telling us, and us telling someone else, who passed it on to someone else, and one of those threads might have led right back to Roy Kelly or Vince Kelly or whatever his name was. What would he have thought?” Her fingers kept busy, brushing back and forth, back and forth, across the water, making tiny waves, and her shoulders shuddered as she sighed from somewhere low and deep.

  “The last few years, Gramps got into this history stuff, all the old Sydney stuff, settlement and the British, and then, later, the bridge. He was really taken with it. I thought at first it was just that he wanted new things to talk about, new stories to tell. Towards the end, he said it was because Joe Brown had always been interested in it, and he wanted to do it for him. We found some fantastic stories—the day someone thought they saw an alligator here; the day someone said they’d found gold here.” She laughed. “And then there were whole days when nothing had been written down—no record of anything in a journal or a letter.” As if Sydney might have skipped that twenty-four hours altogether—or something so impossible had happened that the whole settlement had united around it in silence.