by Peter Rix
The change came around lunchtime on the Monday. It wasn’t like anyone made an announcement or issued an order or anything when the operation’s status slipped from search-and-rescue to recovery, but everyone seemed to know. Mostly. The boy’s father would have none of it.
He yelled at the search leaders, Reallocate resources? You mean give up, don’t you?’
Jeremy Farmer had stayed close to the couple, had observed the progression of their emotional states, tried to assess what they needed from him at each stage. His task was made more difficult by the estrangement that seemed to worsen between them every hour. Not that they argued; it was more as if the boy’s mother and father had each judged themselves guilty and yet at the same time held what had happened against the other. He saw them try to get past it, to be united in their worry and desperation, but it seemed beyond them, and he could only watch, fearfully, as husband and wife retreated into their separate isolation.
Doc Farmer had done the identification duties several times since he’d arrived in Wassford, especially with the folk from the settlement; he never felt comfortable just leaving them to the police. The morgue tacked on at the back of the base hospital on the coast was a room he knew well. The last time was the worst. Three boys, fourteen to sixteen, all grogged up, had run a stolen car off the highway. He’d brought the family across, Dorrie and the rest, the timid group shuffling across the lino floor to the row of steel benches, refusing to look up, as if being there were more a matter of shame than anything else. And the boys were just sleeping, surely, so peaceful in that pristine, still space.
Now he was back.
Doug found the boy just after five on the Monday evening, wedged under a rock along that backwash stretch, just as he’d predicted. He couldn’t make eye contact either when he came in to tell Frank and the others, as if he were embarrassed to be proven right. Not that the rescuers had really doubted him, not the ones who knew; it was simply a question of how long it would take for the levels to drop and expose the covered rocks and sunken snags and tree limbs.
They got Doc Farmer on the mobile, and he drove to the guesthouse. The wife was there alone. Doc climbed the steps, but she must have heard his footsteps and was suddenly before him in the open doorway. She saw, and knew. As clean as that, no words needed. Maybe there was one moment as she searched his eyes, a moment of uncertainty, of hope, but it was gone before it could offer her anything, and with just one sharp intake of breath she leant against the door jamb and slid quietly to the floor.
As quickly, she looked up at him and asked, Where is he? I need to …
They’ve taken him across to the coast, Jeremy told her. To the hospital. Frank and the Police Rescue thought it best. If they’d checked with me first, I would have said to wait … I’m sorry. I’ll drive you over there now. Is Jim …?
He went to the oval to talk with the copter crew, she said. She looked out towards the road but made no move to stand.
Jeremy lowered himself to be with her, and they stayed like that for some time. Fran Campion gave one long, awful groan that echoed through the old timber building, then she gathered herself, crying quietly, looking out from the veranda down the grassy slope to the river. She’d had time, Doc realised. Twenty-four hours to, what … come to terms? The Campions had another boy, he knew. They’d been trying to contact him. He was older, Jeremy recalled them saying. And then a son like this, Down Syndrome. Did that change it? Make it less … no, she was a mother who had lost her son, that was all.
It’s silly. You don’t know him, she told the doctor as they sat in the doorway, but it seems important now that people do know … everyone … what he was like, what it was like for him. Does that …?
I think it makes perfect sense, Doc told her, and he sat beside her and listened while she spoke.
Like most doctors, Jeremy Farmer had given many people the worst possible news and had seen the full range of how people took it. Even from his short time with Mrs Campion, he knew she would not lapse into hysteria. They heard Jim coming along the gritty road. He ran when he saw them, pulled his wife to her feet, held her, and she cried into his chest, the wracking, gut-tearing sobs the doctor had expected before and that he now felt relieved by. It was much the same with the husband, Jim. The same but completely different. He, too, stayed calm, as all the frustrated aggression of the past two days drained from him. On the surface, at least. But, oh, Doc saw the effort it took, the struggle to lock down the pain, to not lose control in the presence of a small-town GP, perhaps not even in front of his wife.
There was nobody about; the other guests had made themselves scarce or headed down to the pub to lap up the drama. Doc and the couple left the veranda to sit in the overstuffed chairs in the guesthouse lounge. He had played this role a dozen times up here, but this was different. It came to him later that people in Wassford grieved together, as couples and families, but that the Campions had suffered their loss as individuals. He watched the wife release herself into grief, one minute pouring out her love for the boy, then dissolving as if each revelation about him needed to be launched on a flood of tears. The boy’s father cried too, but, in the small spaces between the outpourings, hers and his, he kept returning to the accident to ask who had found his son’s body, and exactly when and where, and how it might have been if they had looked in that place earlier. And how dangerous was it for this group to be on this river in the first place. And many more like that, until his wife had had enough.
What does it matter, Jim? What will it change? Just stop it.
Forty minutes after the husband’s return, they let themselves be led to Jeremy’s car for the drive across to the coast. He had expected they would want to go as soon as he brought the news, and both initially said so. But as they’d talked it seemed to the doctor as if each needed first to prepare themselves, as if the father needed to come with a clear explanation of the boy’s death and his wife to bring her son a gift, the gift of his life.
They took the next afternoon’s flight back to Sydney. She argued with her husband that they had to get back in time to meet their other son, coming in from overseas, but it might have been, too, that she couldn’t face the long drive home. They would be there, too, to receive the boy’s body when it was released. Frank from the SES would see to Jim’s vehicle being transported down the highway. Doc Farmer drove them to the airport.
He found small things to ask and speak of for the first part of the drive, but the couple were beyond talk, and so they had miles of nothing to say until he turned into the airport road. And then Jim Campion blurted out something that took both his wife and the doctor by surprise. He came out with it in a rush, leaning forward from the back seat to make sure they both heard, like he had to say it then, before it was just the two of them, he and his wife, alone.
I know it’s not the same thing, Fran, he said, losing what I never had. And then he said it again, like he had to convince her. I do know it, Fran, I do.
And then they were at the terminal and all three in the car were grateful to escape into the bustling tasks of air travel.
She’ll be all right, the mother, Jeremy told Lionel on his return. I think she will, anyway.
What about him? Lionel asked.
I don’t know, the doctor admitted. The mother reminded me of some of the people here, if you know what I mean, but I’m not sure if her husband’s got the capacity for, how can I say … to absorb something like that, accept. It’s always harder for ones like that.
Bloody acceptance, Lionel said fiercely, but then he dropped his head and fell silent.
Twenty-Two
A month after the accident on the river, Doc Farmer received a notice of service under the names of Fran and Jim Campion. Their son’s funeral had been kept small and private because of delays in releasing his body and the blame game being played out in the media, and there had even been talk of a coronial inquest.
We need something more for Tom, the notice said, and so they were planning a memorial
gathering.
I know it’s a long way, Fran had added in a handwritten PS, but we hope you can come.
She asked Doc Farmer to pass on the invitation to everyone who had helped, and especially ‘Uncle Doug’ and ‘Aunty Dorrie’. (I’m sorry, I don’t know their second names, she’d written, but I’m sure you know who I mean.)
Doug and Dorrie declined, as Jeremy knew they would, and Lionel was attending an in-service course up in Brisbane. Jeremy nursed the old Volvo down to Sydney by himself. It was a good service, held in the community hall where the disability group got together. The hall was packed and the crowd spilt out onto an open grassed area. The ceremony was led by a young man, who introduced himself as having the best brother anyone could wish for, then paused for several excruciating seconds before saying in a voice that broke and recovered and broke again, I’ll tell you this, Tom … made me … a better person, that’s for sure.
Fran Campion delivered the main eulogy. For Jeremy, it brought back the fragments she had wanted to share with him slumped in the guesthouse doorway, but extended now, and from the crowd’s reaction her son had obviously been quite a character. She pointed out Doctor Farmer and asked him to pass on the family’s thanks to the people of Wassford. She made special mention, also, of the two leaders of the group’s trip, acknowledged the impossible dilemma they had faced that morning and confirmed she would have had no hesitation in leaving the two boys.
Jim and I often left Tom home alone, even overnight, she said. And he knew how to look after himself in a campsite.
It was clear that she had made this statement already to the young man and woman but that now she wanted everyone to hear it.
In some ways, Russell and Kaylee, she said, looking directly at them, this has been harder for you than anybody … but what … what does Independence Group actually mean if there is no independence? The boys … Tom, made a decision … Some things turn out well and some don’t … Sometimes it is just that simple. That’s how life is … not just for him but for all of us.
She had notes, Jeremy saw, and they helped each time she faltered, but even from well back in the rows it was clear that she was still consumed with a searing, exhausting sorrow. When she put aside the sheets of paper and turned to speak directly to a large photograph of her son, Jeremy closed his eyes in fear for her, but in fact it seemed to give her strength, and he was able to believe again that he had been right; she would come through this.
Look at all these people, Tom, she said to his photo. They’re here for you … just for you … which I know … we all know, is just the way you like it. But don’t let it go to your head, my little man. We all know what a show-off you are!
That brought smiles and laughs, and these seemed to keep her strong for a few sentences more, even though the tears were running freely down her cheeks. But finally it seemed she could not get the words out. Jim Campion came to the lectern to join her. He took up the notes she had discarded.
My son, Tom, he read aloud … our son, showed that day on the river the qualities we loved in him. He was brave, and he believed in himself. I was not there, but I genuinely believe that. He made me proud.
And then Jim, too, looked up from the notes.
I was there … but I was too late to … I was … proud of Tom many times through his life … and I told him so … oh, god … not nearly often enough. But that day … on any other day, he and his best mate Amit would have been fine. And then, as my … as Fran said, then we’d all be listening to Tom telling us what a hero he was.
There were just a couple of laughs this time, and then a great, swelling silence as the couple stood at the lectern, his arm around her, together at least in their determination to do this right for their son.
If Tom could tell us about that day, Jim said finally, looking to the notes again, he would say, Take my advice, Mum … and Dad … I’m nineteen going on twenty. I can do anything.
Jeremy did not see if they were prompted, but at that moment a group of young people – he recognised some of them from the river – traipsed up the centre aisle and from the sides of the hall and from out of seats, scrabbling past those who were not quick enough to make way for them. They arrived at the front of the gathering and immediately took over the show. Fran smiled and hugged a couple of them. Jim was clearly happy to yield the lectern.
It seemed to Jeremy then that they all made speeches, at least a dozen of them. The Indian boy said he didn’t make speeches because that was Tom’s job and then recited everything that had happened on the raft and how his best friend had saved his life. A very pretty and beautifully dressed Down Syndrome girl spoke in a barely audible voice about how she felt sad for someone called Maisie.
I’m very sorry, she said sweetly, but Tom agreed he will only love me. Forever.
Another girl confessed that Tom could be very annoying with all his teasing. She said that sometimes it made her very sad to think about all the things she could not do any more after she fell out of the tree, but when she was saddest she thought about Tom so she could be happy again.
And then another boy took the microphone and rattled off one improbable story after another about Tom’s exploits. When he finally ran out of puff, another girl took over, and then still another. Some stories the crowd knew and laughed and cried at along with the speaker. Others were received in bemusement, as if they were in a foreign tongue or stories from some other magical world that only these people could hope to understand. A girl in a wheelchair handed a sheet of paper to the young Asian man who’d had the skull fracture, and he read a short, brilliant dedication in a resonant, almost regal voice.
On and on the young people spoke, and with such range and intensity it was soon no longer just about Tom Campion, no longer even about loss or death. They talked about themselves and the excitement and achievements of their lives. They boasted about their jobs in banks and department stores and supermarkets, about their prizes for swimming and dancing and putt-putt golf. They swore their love for boyfriends and girlfriends and parents and brothers and sisters and grandparents. One named each of his nieces and nephews and promised to be there for them. Another pointed to a man in the gathering and asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage.
Almost every one of them spoke of the future; the crowd heard about these young people’s hopes and plans in great and emotional detail. There was sobbing and hugging and jostling for control of the microphone so they could launch into their passionate, rambling speeches. It was as if, rather than being frightened or intimidated by this tragedy, they were empowered by it. Oh, they mourned their friend, but they celebrated him, too, and themselves along with him, and with an unselfconscious gusto that caught up the entire hall and transcended the very occasion itself.
An outsider, Jeremy Farmer was transfixed. Their performance should have been inappropriate and embarrassing, but somehow it wasn’t, as he saw in the faces of everyone around him.
Could it be, he wondered, that they were so seldom heard, so little listened to, that here, now, with this huge captive audience, no way were they going to miss the opportunity to stake their claim for attention, for recognition?
And they were listened to; for more than an hour, no one left, no one dared move from their seats. And chaotically, tumultuously, what began as a ceremony to mark a death became an affirmation. Not just of the boy Tom’s life, but of his friends’ lives, too. And it was these young people, Jeremy Farmer marvelled, these ones who even now, at the threshold of a new millennium, were still invisible to most of us, or worse, seen and labelled as less than, it was these who defied the death and pain and grief of this day, took it by the scruff and wrought a transformation. Perhaps they did not really even understand death, he mused, but regardless, one thing was indisputable: on this stricken day, they had showed the assembled gathering the triumph of life against the odds.
Doc Farmer did not want to stay overnight in Sydney, so as soon as the service was over he headed for the car park. As he crossed the
grassed area, where already a throng of boys and girls with various disabilities were crying and hugging but chiacking each other, too, he noticed a figure under a stand of eucalypts at the top of the rise. It was Jim Campion. Jeremy thought to head up there to say goodbye, but there was something in the man’s stance, the set of his jaw, the very aloneness of him under the trees that suggested he would not welcome an intrusion. Jeremy was still hesitating when Fran hurried up to him.
Oh, Doctor Farmer, Jeremy, I’m glad I caught you. Thank you so much for coming today. I wanted you to know, and all the people up there … we, Jim and I, were so grateful for …
The mention of her husband’s name had them both glancing up to the figure at the top of the rise.
Fran began to say something then caught herself and turned back to Jeremy. Anyway, she said. I just wanted you to know, that’s all.
Your son was obviously an extraordinary young man, Jeremy said to her.
Yes, he really was, I think, but you know, all I ever wanted was for Tom to be himself.
The tears were flowing freely again, but she made no attempt to hide them.
That was all I wanted, she said. With all the good and bad, and clever and stupid, and funny and everything else that being himself meant.
She looked across to the milling group of young people on the lawn.
Tom was Tom, you see, Jeremy, she said. I have never known anyone who was so strongly his own person. And I don’t want to think … I refuse to think about him as anything else. There is nothing I can do for him now, but I can do that.