by Ben Hobson
Ben Hobson lives in Brisbane and is entirely keen on his wife, Lena, and their two small boys, Charlie and Henry. He currently teaches English and Music at Bribie Island State High School. In 2014 his novella, If the Saddle Breaks My Spine, was shortlisted for the Viva La Novella prize run by Seizureonline. To Become a Whale is his first novel.
For Charlie and Henry
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First published in 2017
Copyright © Ben Hobson 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia
www.trove.nla.gov.au
ISBN 9781760294397
eISBN 9781760638122
Internal design by Romina Panetta
Set by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Cover design: Romina Panetta
Cover photograph: Jelena Simic Petrovic / Arcangel
There’s no eel so small but it hopes to become a whale.
—German proverb
CONTENTS
ONE: 1961
TWO: 1951
THREE: 1961
FOUR
FIVE: 1955
SIX: 1961
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN: 1956
SIXTEEN: 1961
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE: 1955
TWENTY-SIX: 1961
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE: 1958
FORTY: 1961
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SEVEN
FORTY-EIGHT
FORTY-NINE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ONE
1961
He was told her headstone would be placed tomorrow. For now it leaned against the side of the church, a grey rectangle against the red brick. As family and friends wandered inside for cordial and lamingtons and small sausage rolls provided by the church, the boy gazed at it, the stone, and her name etched in front, so strange to see it written in full. Elizabeth Mary Keogh. Beloved mother and so on. This, the boy decided, would finally convince him of her death. So he stared as the muffled chatter through the wall slowly lost its restraint. But the stone failed to provide anything in the way of finality. The boy expected that, after a while, his father might come looking for him. He didn’t. And so, seemingly forgotten, the boy stayed by the headstone, ran a hand along it. It had been warmed by the sun. He slid his fingers over her name. In his mind he promised he would not ever forget her and that he would pray often and listen for her voice and that she would always be with him.
Later, as the two of them, father and son, walked back to his grandparents’ house from the church, a cool breeze whipped the edges of his jacket. He hugged it around him all the tighter. He struggled to keep pace with his father, who swerved on meagre drink, and every so often he jogged a little to keep up. Hard to do holding his jacket so. He caught up at a corner as his father trailed the two and a half remaining fingers of his ruined hand along a white picket fence, and the boy was finally able to catch a glimpse of the man’s face. But there were no streetlamps down this dusty street and no cars at night and the moon above was mostly hidden by clouds. His father’s face was ensconced in shadow.
His granddad and grandmother were already in bed as they returned, the older man’s snoring loud, reverberating through the walls. His father was careful as he shut the flyscreen door, then the main. The deadlock clunked into place, far too loud in the silence between snores. They took their shoes off and placed them neatly to the side and then started across the linoleum in their socks. They had to avoid the pot plants his grandmother obsessively collected and, in the months leading up to his mother’s death, had forgotten to water. They entered the bedroom and his father gently shut the door, which muffled the snoring only a bit. This room had belonged to his mother and aunty when they were girls, the aunty dead some time ago now. Her picture on the dresser in front of the mirror with his mother as a girl, posed in black and white. Both were dolled up in floral dresses, his mother’s arms around his aunty’s middle. Younger in the photo than the boy was now. He wondered at that.
The boy sat on his aunty’s bed as his father undressed until his father said, ‘Get ready for bed, mate.’
The boy removed his nice shirt and belt and his too-baggy black pants. These funeral clothes had once been his father’s. When his father’s parents died his old clothes had arrived in a suitcase with a note and some books and a moth-eaten piece of cloth. The boy had never met his father’s parents and had never questioned their absence. The boy’s mother had kept these clothes for nice but there had never been a purpose for them and they had stayed in his closet until the day she died. The boy was sad she never saw him so well dressed.
As they put on their pyjamas the boy compared the two of them in the circular mirror that sat atop the dresser. He rubbed his hands over his face and imagined his father’s visage etched into his own. What would it be like to have a beard, to have it growing from the neck?
‘You did well today,’ his father said, drawing breath. ‘Not hard shovelling dirt, though, is it?’
Earlier, at her gravesite, the herd of mourners surrounding the hole in the earth that held her coffin, his father had kicked at a pile of nearby dirt and stepped back. Arched his eyebrows at the boy. As everyone watched, the boy had begun to shovel. He had not felt up to the task and had not been prepared, and his doubt had slowed his shovelling. The sound the dirt made as it struck the wood like drumming fingers on a tree. The sun glowed against the surface of her coffin until he had covered it in thick clods and then it grew lifeless, dull, a feature of the landscape. None of the other men helped him at all, and in their stares and sorrow the boy sensed an importance about this act he could not fathom. When he had finished he dropped the shovel onto the nearby grass. The clanging sound like a slap to the ear. He looked to his father for forgiveness. Wordless disapproval instead in the man’s clenched fist, the way his mouth had creased. The boy felt he’d failed whatever test he’d been set.
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The father now finished buttoning his pyjama shirt, tousled the boy’s hair. The boy climbed into bed and his father stood at the light switch and waited for the boy to settle beneath the blankets, burrowing in like a wombat, before he turned it off. Until the boy’s eyes adjusted he could only hear his father and not see him. An animal in the dark. The feather doona was too hot, so the boy kicked it off. The boy said, ‘I don’t know what to feel.’
His father grunted. Then, ‘Feel sad. You should feel sad.’
‘I do,’ the boy said. ‘But it doesn’t seem real.’
Another grunt. ‘Go to sleep.’
Silence for a time. The boy heard his father’s breathing soften and steady, which suggested slumber, but he ventured another question. ‘Are we going home tomorrow?’
A murmur of assent.
‘Why did Mum get buried here and not at home?’
‘This is what she wanted,’ his father said, and shifted in bed. ‘Go to sleep.’
‘Where will I be buried?’
‘Be buried wherever you want.’
‘What about you? Will you be buried here?’
‘I’m not a bloody Werner, mate,’ his father said. ‘Now go to sleep.’
So even when all three of them were dead – the boy, the father, the mother – they still would not be together. His father in one cemetery and his mother in another. And the boy, in the middle, having to choose.
His father’s breathing drifted into a light snore. The boy was wide awake and wished his mother was there to sort out the mess in his head. What he tried to remember now, tucked up in bed, was how soft she had been. His father, by contrast, was jagged. The boy had settled in himself that his mother would die and prepared himself for her absence, but he had never thought on what shape life might take for he and his father afterwards. Without her it was only them. To fall asleep, the boy stared at his father in the shadows, his body moving with each snore. The boy did his best to take from this some comfort.
In the early hours the boy sobbed. He did his best to hide the noise he was making with a hand clasped tight over his mouth and his head buried in his pillow.
Despite the boy’s efforts, his father woke. ‘You alright?’
A sniff. The boy couldn’t answer.
Another moment and his father added, ‘You have to stop crying, mate, and get some sleep. Crying doesn’t fix anything.’
This upset the boy further, but he clenched his fingers into his palms and did his best to quieten. He was sure his father regretted what he’d said because in the shadows he saw this parent of his sit up and regard him. When the boy appeared calm, the shadow lay back down. Soon the snoring began again. The boy listened and counted the snores until he fell asleep.
The boy woke. His father’s bed was already empty so he sat up. He looked in the mirror and scuffed his messy hair and yawned. Quickly he dressed from his already packed suitcase, then left the room. Down the corridor the sound of male chatter and the smell of burnt butter. The boy stumbled into the kitchen and sat at the round table. His granddad, wearing a black apron, hunched over the stovetop with smoke billowing around him. His father rested against the kitchen counter with an orange coffee cup in his hands. The boy looked at him and his father winked in his direction, sipped, and tilted his head towards the back of his granddad in mock alarm. The boy refused to add to this insult and looked crossly at his father, who shrugged.
Soon his granddad turned and, from his black and smoking pan, ladled burnt eggs onto buttered bread sitting on three plates. He plonked it down before the boy and then sat opposite him at the table and said, looking at the father, ‘Have the eggs.’
‘I’m okay with the coffee.’
‘You want some, mate?’ his granddad asked, turning towards him.
‘Don’t think he drinks coffee yet, Charles. He’s only thirteen, God’s sake.’
‘What?’ his granddad said, smiling. ‘You’re thirteen, are you?’
‘Where’s Grandma?’ the boy asked, chewing, crunching on something unpleasant.
His granddad coughed and looked at his father and said, ‘She’s not feeling well. She’s still in bed.’
‘Won’t she want some eggs?’
His granddad smiled again. ‘I asked. Her loss, right?’
The boy ate. The eggs were awful, but for the sake of his granddad, he feigned delight. He forked in another piece.
His granddad leaned back from the table and said to his father, ‘You still heading off today?’
‘Soon as we’ve eaten.’
‘Well,’ his granddad said, and took a moment to compose himself. He shuffled his hands across the table and eventually settled them before him, clasped together. ‘You look after our Sam.’ There was a ripple in his voice, like he was stifling a cough.
‘I will.’
‘And you’ll have to bring him to visit.’
His father laughed loudly. He dashed the remainder of his coffee in the sink and turned on the faucet to rinse the cup. He said, ‘We’re just going home. We’re not running out on you. Liz died, doesn’t change you and him.’ He nodded at his son. ‘Sam’ll visit at Christmas like normal.’
The boy nodded while he chewed another forkful of eggs. His granddad’s suggestion that his father might be incapable of caring for him had never struck him before and he dwelled on this as he finished his eggs, which made them taste even more unpleasant.
‘We can come back before Christmas too,’ the boy added. He tilted his head back to regard his father, whose smile and slow nod might have meant anything.
There had been a silence developing between his granddad and his father while the boy had eaten his eggs. Some kind of shared understanding between the two men to which he was not privy. He drank some orange juice and watched his granddad’s eyes as the old man focused on the table before him and fiddled with his cutlery. There was nothing in him that suggested things were well or that anything would ever again be the same. The summers the boy had spent at this house whisked away with his mother’s death. Judging by his granddad’s jaw, the hint of moisture in his eyes, the old man doubted he would ever see his grandson again, and this was how he would say goodbye, with ruined eggs.
‘You alright, Granddad?’
His granddad looked at him and smiled and said, ‘I’m just upset about your mother.’
The boy reached a hand across the table and said, ‘You still have us.’
Meant to be a comfort, this instead seemed to make things worse, his granddad’s nose wrinkling as the words struck him. So the boy finished his orange juice in silence and pushed his chair back and went to stand beside his father.
‘Thanks for everything,’ his father said.
‘You’re already packed?’
‘This morning. You want to say goodbye to Grandma, mate?’
His father gently pushed him in the back as though he were a small child and the boy reluctantly walked into his grandparents’ room, a place he had seldom been before. It smelled of dust. His grandma, lying in darkness, was cloaked in a sheet. Just like his mother at her death. The blinds were drawn and there were wadded-up tissues littering the bed like leaves after a storm. Her body heaved with sobbing and the boy stood at a loss. ‘Grandma?’ he said.
She shooed him off with an impatient wave of her hand and didn’t even turn to look. So he left. His father offered his sour expression a commiserating smile and a soft pat on the back.
TWO
1951
The young father squatted down in front of his son’s bookcase and looked over his shoulder as his son rushed in and clambered onto his back. With some effort he managed to wrangle the boy around and hold him to his chest, so they were both facing the small selection of books before them.
‘Which one tonight, mate?’
‘Rabbits,’ his son said, and pulled the book from the shelf. ‘Read Little Georgie.’
‘Where he jumps over –’ his voice shifted to menacing ‘– Dead Man’s Brook?’
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br /> His son beamed. ‘Uh-huh.’
‘Dead Man’s Brook?’ More menacing, tickling the boy beneath the arms, each word louder than the one before.
His son laughed and squirmed. The boy’s mother appeared at the doorway.
‘What are you two up to?’
‘Dad’s reading Rabbits,’ the boy said, holding up the book.
His father smiled. ‘I sure am.’
‘Do you two want a Milo?’
His father’s face widened in mock surprise. ‘A Milo?’ Like he’d never heard of such a thing.
His boy’s face followed his. ‘Yes, Mummy.’ Nodding theatrically
‘Yes what, Mummy?’
‘Yes, please.’
His mother, smiling, walked away. His father sat on the customary chair and patted his lap. The boy climbed up, struggling to hold the book while he did.
His father read the story about a small rabbit brave enough to jump a stream, chased by vicious dogs. He changed his voice to suit the characters – a higher pitch for the rabbits, a gruff timbre for the dog – which made his son laugh.
Soon the boy was in bed, upright, drinking the hot Milo brought in by his mother. She sat on the end of the bed; his father remained in the chair.
‘You know your dad’s heading back in a few days, sweetheart?’ his mother said, one hand on his covered foot.
‘To Tangalooma.’
‘That’s right. To Tangalooma.’
His father leaned forward. His son slurped the last of his Milo and his father took the cup and put it on the bedside table. ‘But guess what? This time you and Mummy get to come and visit. And stay with me.’
‘That’s right,’ his mother said. ‘We’re going to visit Daddy in a few weeks.’
‘See the whales?’
‘Yeah, mate,’ his father said. ‘You’ll see the whales.’
‘Mummy will come too?’
‘Yeah, Mummy’ll be there.’
‘Will I go on the boat?’
‘Yeah.’
His son smiled. ‘And see Daddy?’
‘That’s right, mate. ’Cause you know I miss you when I’m away.’