Joyful

by Robert Hillman

  Jennifer wrote now of her Armenian father, Leon’s great-grandfather, a figure too distant for Leon ever to have inquired about in much detail, and of her mother, Lucia, whose own father had come to Australia in the gold rush and found a nugget, ‘as big as a cow’. But even when Jennifer spoke of her family she always returned to David Plymouth, as if her life had been an avenue that led ultimately to this overwhelming passion. She wrote of studying at Girton College and of sitting her Tripos at Cambridge as her mother had before her; of travelling to hear the Christian Socialist Walter Victor preaching in the fields. In the space of the page that it took her to tell all this, she backtracked to David Plymouth four times.

  Leon looked up from the journal in alarm. He thought for a moment then said aloud: ‘That’s not me.’ Jennifer had written the journal in order to draw every event of her life into the scheme of her passion, but what he wrote on the floorboards of Joyful was different in kind. He said again: ‘That’s not me.’ Nothing led to Tess.

  We travelled on foot from the town to the field with many others, some came in families with children scrubbed bright in best clothes. Walter would not raise himself above them by so humble a height as a stepladder, but stood in the tall grass and removed his coat and spoke to us in his braces and a blue collarless shirt such as a miner might wear. The only Jesus I knew was Mummy’s Perfect Gentleman, the sort of fellow who gave up his seat for a lady and took the smallest piece of cake when a plate was offered. But Walter said that day and every other day of our life together that Jesus earned by his acts any heaven that was owed to him in the way that a man earned the respect of his wife and family by keeping food on the table. He said that day and every day that we make the heaven we inhabit after death and that the heaven we make must have sound shelter for every family and a good broad table in the kitchen. That day and every day he said so many things and some of it true nonsense, but good nonsense that lived and breathed and sweated from its pores. When he’d said that day all that he had in his head and notebook he walked through the crowd and was clapped and his back was thumped by men with love in their eyes; men I think who could live with all sorts of Christs but enjoyed the Walter Victor Christ especially for his relish of ale and parkin. He came to me, Walter, and my young man (who had I think an endless name with a hyphen and perhaps eight syllables) where we stood on wooden boxes we’d hired for a penny and said we must join him for refreshments at the home of his great patron Sir Someone who detested his own class. Darling Walter, surely you can hear me, I love you dearly and your funny Jesus, I honour you each day, I commence each entry in this ill-advised omnibus with your special prayer. But can you understand what David was to me, is to me, what a weakling my longing makes of me?

  Jennifer’s obsession with David Plymouth reminded Leon of his mother’s madness at forty when she’d fallen in love with a young man she’d met at the State Library. Dorothy in her cardigan and tweed skirt announcing one afternoon: ‘I’m going away with him.’ But the young man didn’t want that; he didn’t want any of Dorothy, and her heart broke. Leon and his father had watched in pity as if at a woman writhing in a padded cell. But she got over it, Dorothy. Quite completely. Leon, on the steps of Joyful, recalled exactly what he’d thought at the time, a boy in his teens: ‘But don’t forget him!’

  chapter 23

  Madman

  CITIZENS HAD gathered as if at a crime scene, arms folded, not yet certain if what they were watching could be considered important. The known facts were provided in murmurs for the newly arrived. In the absence of a policeman, Daanya Delli, alerted by a neighbour’s phone call to the Wangaratta clinic, was accepted as the person most likely to restore order.

  Everything was piled on the footpath: beds and bedding, crockery, cutlery, pots and pans, clothing, furniture. The new refrigerator rested awkwardly against the brick fence, door agape, its contents a mishmash of leaking containers. Emmanuel Delli sat cross-legged in the midst of the mess, a note pinned to his necktie: I KILLED COURTNEY. Daanya, who’d arrived only a few minutes earlier, held her husband’s head against her abdomen and stroked his hair. She quietly removed the note, crumpled it with one hand and pushed it into the pocket of her jacket. From the opposite pocket she retrieved her mobile phone and dialled a number. The people watching, champions of common sense, radiated approval.

  ‘Mr Crowe? It’s Daanya Delli. I don’t understand. Have we been evicted?’

  Mr Crowe said, ‘Not in the least! Not in the least! I told Mr Delli that he had a full three months to move. I think that’s fair, three months.’

  ‘So we are being evicted?’

  ‘The situation,’ said Mr Crowe.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The situation, Mrs Delli.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Mrs Delli, the situation.’

  Daanya said, ‘Thank you,’ and rang off. She squatted in front of her husband. She said, ‘Poor dear man.’ Mr Crowe had come to the house with his bad news, so it seemed. Emmanuel in his humiliation must have refused to stay an hour longer. He had emptied the house onto the nature strip.

  ‘Does anyone know of a removalist?’ she asked the onlookers. Mrs Boyce, ancient in the shire, stepped forward in pale green and lilac and said she would put the Dellis up at her cottage in Meyer Street. ‘Mrs Boyce, we thank you for your kindness. But we cannot accept. We will have our belongings taken to storage somewhere. We will stay at the motel.’

  Mrs Boyce acknowledged with a nod Daanya’s good sense in turning down the offer. She said, ‘Bob Danish’ll move you love, but Gawd knows where to!’

  Bob Danish arrived with his van and a young Aboriginal offsider in a Washington Redskins cap. Together they packed the Dellis’ belongings into sturdy cartons. Bob Danish had arranged for the load to be stored in Des Hocking’s disused dairy in Chiltern, and was followed to that destination by Daanya and Emmanuel. But once at the Hocking property, greeted by Des, Emmanuel emerged from his torpor to ask the attractive lady of the house if it was not an ordeal to live with a husband as ugly as hers. The offer of storage was withdrawn. The professor again sabotaged accommodation for the Delli belongings at an alternative site, still in Chiltern. He told the teenage daughter of the site’s owner that he had recently murdered a girl of her age and couldn’t be responsible for his moods at certain times. ‘These cursed hands!’ Bob Danish, a practising Baptist of even temper, counselled Emmanuel, in language stronger than he normally employed, to hold his tongue. Emmanuel said he would if he could, but then accused Marcus, Bob’s young helper, of making ‘nigger eyes’ at Daanya. Bob’s patience and his mission came to an end in the early evening when the professor demanded that his belongings be unloaded onto the grassy verge of the Beechworth–Yackandandah road.

  ‘Suits me!’ said Bob, blue eyes bulging with conviction. Daanya, at her wits’ end, watched in despair as carton after carton joined sofa, armchairs, tables, bed and the big, space-age LG refrigerator on the roadside. Before the van pulled away, Marcus ran back to console Daanya by shaking her hand. ‘Sorry about this, Mrs Delli. Sorry.’

  Daanya sat on the sofa while her husband stood with hands in pockets gazing at the hills. He whistled a tune softly, a Kurdish tune, and every so often dipped his shoulder as if recalling the dance that went with the tune. It had been played at their wedding.

  ‘Everything super splendid, honey?’ he called to Daanya. ‘Everything A-okay?’

  When she didn’t reply, he wandered over to a tall, framed mirror and saw himself reflected against the sky and the hills and the highway. He tapped at his hair, straightened his tie, then stood before his wife with his arms crossed.

  ‘It’s come to this!’ he said. ‘Cast out by the Orstayuns! Well, it’s a disgrace! Storm the flamin’ crows!’

  Daanya had been massaging her temples, her eyes closed. She opened them to look up at her husband. There he stood in all his vanity, not a hair out of place, shoes polished to a finish so brilliant they reflected the sky. He st
ood on the very frontier of insanity, capable of tottering one way into complete madness, or the other, into a maelstrom of grief. She felt she could forgive him anything. She could forgive murder, if he took it into his head to kill her. Her own grief had led her back to a necessary God. Her husband could only struggle along on that frontier.

  ‘It’s stone the crows, husband, not storm the crows.’

  ‘Is it, then? Stone the crows? Well that’s an improvement. Stone the flamin’ crows!’

  ‘Are you satisfied, at last? We have no home. We sit on the roadside with our possessions strewn around us. We are the shame of the town. Surely you must feel some satisfaction?’

  ‘Since you ask—yes. Yes, one does feel a certain glow. I think the only thing that could complete the day would be if you were to go and hang yourself from that tree over there.’

  Daanya said, ‘Sit beside me.’

  Emmanuel, after a pause, sat himself down. Daanya took his hand and kissed it, three times, four times.

  ‘My poor darling,’ she said, in Kurdish. ‘My poor mad man.’

  part six

  Sandra

  chapter 24

  Kristobel

  I’VE BEEN thinking of my father, Roger, Leon wrote on the floorboard,who went through life as if floating and indeed devoted all of his time away from business studying early balloonists. I think you might have liked him darling. Women were forever squeezing him as if they expected him to make a sound like a soft toy. So handsome and charming, like the uncle in certain families to whom the nieces are worryingly attracted. He never in my life lost his temper and treated Dorothy my mother with such kindness if her moods sent her spiralling. One time out of the blue she fell in love with a young man she met at the State Library researching her book about Australian suffragettes—the most unlikely subject for a woman who accepted with perfect equanimity all her life that the man must lead. She went wailing about the house for two days, wailing in her nightdress at noon. It was unrequited love. God knows what Dorothy was thinking, utterly unlike her. Afterwards she finished her book. I never showed you! I reproach myself! It’s a lovely thing, an argument so poised, one of those rare books that rise above mere opinion and make art out of conviction. This and a thousand things I did not mention. Darling you make me think things I’m almost ashamed to admit—that spirits can survive, that your spirit is in this house and outside or is

  That was all the space the floorboard provided, and it was the last of the fresh floorboards. The new panels on the wall of the library, the hall and the observatory were also now covered in script. Nothing should have prevented him from driving into Yackandandah and buying a dozen notebooks, but when he tried to communicate conventionally with Tess it didn’t work. It was only when he put aside paper and knelt on the floor or leaned against a wall that he became free enough to feel her there taking in what he wrote. The only solution he could think of was to have all the floorboards sanded—those that hadn’t been replaced—and also the panels of the two hallways and the library.

  He was in the observatory using his mobile phone to contact a tradesman when Kristobel, out of nowhere, appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Leon, what the fuck?’

  Leon returned his phone to the pocket of his coat. Tears found tracks down his cheeks. Lucas was here, too.

  ‘I’ve wanted you to come back. Both of you.’

  ‘Okay, we did well, but what’s the story with all the graffiti, you lunatic?’

  ‘It’s a letter.’

  ‘It’s a letter?’

  ‘To Tess.’

  ‘Yeah? A letter? On the floor? On the walls?’

  Kristobel had taken him in her arms. Over her shoulder he attempted to smile at Lucas, propped laconically in the doorway.

  ‘I’ve been listening to your music,’ he said to Kristobel. ‘I like the songs, many of them.’

  Kristobel stepped back and grinned. She did a swaying dance, tapping her belly.

  ‘I’m having a baby! Me! Fuck!’

  ‘Very good! Is it?’

  ‘Yep!’

  Kristobel seized Lucas and pulled him into the observatory. ‘Here’s Daddy. Say hello to Leon, Daddy.’

  ‘Nice to see you again, Leon.’

  Kristobel said, ‘Conceived here! What d’you think?’

  ‘Well that’s…that’s wonderful. I’m very happy for you. For both of you.’

  ‘It was a very special fuck. I remember it. Sorry! Sorry, Leon. You don’t say fuck, do you?’

  ‘Well, I have. Once or twice. I think.’

  Kristobel shrieked and hugged Leon again. ‘“Once or twice.” That’s so—what is it, babe?’

  ‘Restrained,’ said Lucas.

  ‘Yeah. Restrained. Anyway, we’ll get our stuff from the basement.’

  ‘You’re not staying?’ said Leon. It made him ill with disappointment. Tears filled his eyes again. ‘You can have the basement if you wish. You can have the house.’

  Lucas made a waving-away gesture. ‘Fuck, don’t do that! Don’t all the time say, “You can have it”. Okay? Hold on to your shit, Leon.’

  ‘Leave him alone, hon! He’s being kind!’

  Leon said, ‘I do apologise.’ He wiped away his tears. ‘I’m very happy to see you. Very happy. The thing is…the thing is, I want to ask you about…about something.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Aboriginal things. Indigenous things.’

  Lucas rolled his eyes.

  ‘Would that be wrong?’ said Leon. ‘I don’t wish to—I don’t wish to violate.’

  ‘Starving!’ said Kristobel. ‘Got a bikkie, Leon? Got a lamb chop? ’Course not. What about a drink, well?’

  ‘The baby,’ said Lucas.

  ‘One drink’s not gonna do any harm! D’you think?’

  Leon served scotch in the sun on the verandah. Happiness returned and like a soft breeze caressed his cheeks and neck. Kristobel had taken off her ugly jacket trimmed with pink fluff and stood tall and graceful in a black T-shirt and blue jeans rolled at the cuffs. Leon thought of Tess’s beauty and the burden it had been to her, as great beauty in its improbability was to a woman unless she grasped what it expressed. But Kristobel was different. What part her beauty played in her minute-to-minute consciousness was impossible to see. She didn’t use any of the tricks that Tess relied on when the longing to slough the burden of her looks overcame her; foul language, whorish make-up, crude sexist jokes. Leon found himself smiling at her, and at Lucas. Kristobel caught his smile and appeared to enjoy it.

  ‘Been to Brissy,’ she said. ‘Five or six gigs. Hon?’

  ‘Eight,’ said Lucas.

  ‘Eight. Yeah. Really?’

  ‘Three for Liam in Fortitude, two at the Vulture, two at the Duke, and the festival.’

  ‘Eight. And now we’ve got a coupla months in Melbourne at Muse. Muse, is that it? Or Moose?’

  ‘Muse,’ said Lucas.

  ‘Muse. Come back and see you sometime next year. After the baby. How’d that be?’

  ‘Wonderful.’

  ‘Be great. We’re homeless, Leon! Sick of it. Used to chill here all the time. Past coupla years, well. When it suited Mister Danny. Love it here.’

  ‘Could this be your home?’ said Leon. ‘When you’re bigger. In your third trimester. Could this be your home then?’

  Kristobel shrieked. Still holding her glass, she ran rapidly on the spot, a sort of jig. Laughter fell from her like the music of bells.

  ‘Trimester! Fuck, Leon! Where’d you get that? Trimester!’

  ‘It’s a term for the division of the nine months of pregnancy. First, sec—’

  ‘No! Yuck! Shutup! I don’t want you trimestering everywhere! You sound like one of those fat old baby nurses with a watch pinned on their dress!’ She kissed him. ‘Gonna go,’ she said. ‘We’ll come back.’

  ‘I wanted to ask you about something.’

  ‘Oh yeah. ’Bout what?’

  ‘I wanted to ask you and Lucas…I don’t
know how to put it…’

  ‘Try, well!’

  ‘It’s just that…it’s just that I’ve been very unhappy. Very. Since Tess died. I told you that Tess had died, you’ll recall. My wife, Tess?’

  Lucas, leaning on the balustrade, put his hands in the pockets of his jeans and looked down at his boots.

  ‘Yep,’ said Kristobel.

  ‘Only I was wondering if Indigenous people, such as yourselves, if you know what to do when you’re very unhappy, if someone you love dies? And you have this most frightful pain? If you can keep the person you love alive, somehow, I can’t imagine how, but somehow keep that person alive? Am I making sense? If it’s secret, then of course…And I apologise if that…if that’s one.’

  Kristobel lifted her shoulders then let them drop.

  ‘Honey,’ she said, ‘somebody dies, you feel bad, that’s all there is to it. You just feel bad.’

  ‘But there’s nothing else? I think…I think her spirit’s here. Can that be possible?’

  Kristobel made a face and again let her shoulders rise and drop. ‘S’pose.’ She turned to Lucas. ‘What d’you think? Hey, Mister Genius Big Brain? He’s been to yoony, haven’t you, baby? Been to yoony.’