Tom Houghton

by Todd Alexander

  From up high there was a commanding view of the eastern suburbs one way, and the harbour boats another. A strong breeze had picked up and it felt good against my skin. The first night I’d brought Damon home, I’d gone down on him up here, well after midnight but still early enough for the thrill of possibly being caught. I made myself a decent lover for him that night, assumed it was my one chance to explore his body, and didn’t care that he barely noticed, or cared for, mine. But to my astonishment he had come back for more, had quickly agreed to stay with me for the run of the play. I wondered whether the memory of that night would now forever taint my time on the roof when previously it had been for long hours reading, browning my skin as I read the Sunday papers, lively and uplifting chitchat with an array of neighbours.

  I called my resident psychologist – Hanna – and as luck would have it, she picked up.

  ‘I can’t believe he would choose to pay money to live in some hovel with a complete stranger rather than stay here with me for free,’ I said, once the topic of the call had been established.

  ‘You don’t even know he was looking to move out, bimbo. Don’t you think you’ve been a bit premature?’ She mumbled something to Jakob.

  ‘I didn’t call you for I told you so. I was hoping for some inspiration, stupidly.’

  ‘Yes, sorry, wrong number. But think about it, my dear, he was paying you, wasn’t he?’

  ‘You know, the fucked-up thing about all of this is I could forgo the intimacy – honestly, I can’t keep someone like him – but the thought of him leaving, of never having his form next to me in bed again, of never seeing him walk around here naked . . . now that is something I cannot let go of so easily.’

  ‘Thanks for the visual imagery. You’re sounding pretty cut up about this one. I can’t believe Puppy is so under your skin. Please don’t cry over the phone like one of your usual break-ups . . .’

  ‘If he wanted to be released from our current little arrangement,’ I continued, without acknowledging my mini-meltdown from three men back, ‘he didn’t need to go to the extreme of wasting money on rent with someone on Gumtree.’

  ‘Well, what’s done can’t be un. I think you know deep down you were just using him as porn. At our age you’re lucky to have had that in bed with you for as long as you have.’

  ‘Really? That’s it? Nothing more sage?’ She’d coached me through myriad failed dates, deflated one-night stands and the odd weeks-long tryst. Hanna was even gracious enough not to judge my dalliances with women.

  ‘Even a puppy can only be kicked so many times before he runs away from his master. Get over it. It’s done. Now go read the book I bought you for your birthday.’

  ‘Remind me why we’re friends?’

  ‘Because I don’t let you wallow in your own shit. Have to run. Ciao,’ she finished without irony, and the line went dead.

  I wiped away a token solitary tear. She was right, but then that was no surprise, because she always was. I’d dragged her through enough of my dramas (petty and otherwise) for her to be able to cut to the quick.

  I’d run out of wine but didn’t want to go down there while he was still in the flat. But, damn, how I needed a second drink if I was going on tonight and wanted to give a half-decent performance that was not diverted entirely by thoughts of Damon, and whether I would miss him, and how long it would be until he met another guy, or girl, and I’d be forced to endure god-awful moments of running into them on the scene pretending that I was never more than just a landlord who failed to charge a fee.

  I eventually found the courage to walk down the stairs, vowed that I would even be man enough to ask him to join me for another, at least end things on a note that was civil or even pleasant. But when I went inside the flat he was gone, as was his duffel bag. On one of my pillows was his grey come-rag, cradling his key. I poured myself a small glass of wine and took it like a shot, then did another. I wasn’t afraid of loneliness but I sure hated the feeling of regret.

   Six

  It was the first funeral I’d been to. It was nothing like I expected, not the same as those projected onto cinema screens. It was sombre, yes, and silent, but the mood of humility clinging to the air was almost suffocating. My mother remained largely underwrought and this set the scene for how I was expected to act. A void had entered my existence, and in that realisation I thought how strange it was to feel emptiness had arrived, rather than, as I had been expecting, that something of weight would have been lifted. I stared blankly at the wooden box a few metres in front of me and, though I tried hard not to entertain it, wondered what Pa looked like now, inside it. Would his eyes be open or closed? Would his skin be grey or still retain some of its tan? How would Pa look in years to come if he’d been buried instead of burnt? How many years before there was no flesh, only bone?

  I had suggested to Mum that I should be one of the people to deliver a eulogy. I’d seen enough of them in films to know what was required. My mother considered this for some time – two days in fact – before letting me down gently. This was an adult occasion, she said, and as I would be the only child present, it did not feel acceptable that I should take on the additional burden of speaking in front of a room full of people I barely knew. She explained her fear that others might assume she’d forced me into it, too shaken, or too selfish, to get up and speak for herself. In the end, she decided that one of Pa’s former colleagues, Bill, and Pa’s brother, Vincent, might be the best to speak, for, at the end of it all, surely it was they who knew her father better than most. This was despite the fact that Mum forbade me from speaking with Vincent, who, she said, was the devil incarnate.

  I had no suit to wear and there was no time or money to get measured for a new one, so I chose a pair of black stone-wash jeans and a black long-sleeved T-shirt. The only shoes I had were pointed, shiny faux leather, ones I’d begged Mum to buy me the previous year and now only barely fitted.

  ‘Mum?’ I asked, feeling I looked nowhere near mournful enough, ‘is this okay?’

  ‘Yes, sweetie, it’s respectful and your Pa would appreciate that.’

  ‘But it’s exactly what I wore to a stupid school disco. Isn’t it blasphemous to wear to a funeral?’

  ‘Ah honey, you’re so lovely. First up, we’re not religious and neither was Pa, so there’s no such thing as blasphemy in this house. And secondly, to be honest with you, Tommy, I need to wear my work clothes because they’re the only black I’ve got.’

  ‘Really?’ I said and forced a smile, loving it when our eyes connected like that.

  ‘Yeah. And you know, come to think of it, I reckon Pa would get a little kick out of that idea too. Don’t you think?’

  As the evil Great Uncle Vince spoke of what a special, loving man his brother was, of his warmth and generosity and how he watched out for his younger siblings like a sentinel, standing guard whenever danger approached, I thought about those words and tried to make a connection to the old man I’d known. Each adjective washed over me but did not connect, foreign in its application to grumpy, silent old Pa, but when I thought of our last conversation and the spark that had glowed between us, I couldn’t help but wonder what I’d missed out on. Finally a topic had bonded us, a glimpse of a relationship that each of us could embrace and nurture.

  I sat forlorn but half expecting the great Hepburn to make her grand shaky entrance to say goodbye to her long-distant cousin, Pa. She’d march right up there to that tiny stage and regale them all with fabulous stories of old Hollywood, and the early Houghtons, and she’d make that exquisite connection between her fabulous life and our ordinary one.

  But of course she never came and now other words of Vince’s struck a more familiar chord – proud, honest, hard-working. Vince spoke of Pa’s love for his wife, a forty-year union that nothing came close to breaking, and he mentioned their wedding, and how Pa got up to sing his new bride a song he’d written. For me, this was the most astonishing revelation of all.

  Bill, his ex-colleague, spoke of
yet another person. A man with a hunger for success; never content to surrender or accept the status quo. This wasn’t the Pa who whittled away his hours alone in the garage with his old mate, his true friend, a flagon of port. Surprisingly, Bill also spoke of his keen sense of humour, of how Pa would have all the workers in fits of laughter, and on an almost daily basis too. It struck me that we knew so little of a person’s complete life, just the pockets to which we’re exposed. None of these people knew my grandfather, and I knew nothing of their colleague or brother. How many parts made a whole? Who would ever know of the school-bullied me, and the lengths I went to escape the person I did not want to become?

  I looked up at Mum. She was silent and focused, moving only to dab away the tears that collected in the corners of her eyes. I reached out for her hand and squeezed it tightly. I wanted to tap her on the shoulder, ask her to lean in close, and then whisper in her ear: ‘Mum, I think we’ve stumbled across the wrong funeral.’ Maybe this would make her laugh, or smile at least, but this was her father, and I was old enough to know that my brand of humour, the one my mother and I shared, was not acceptable today. I imagined for a moment this was her funeral. Tom alone in the world, not having her there to snuggle into at night when I felt my isolation could drown me.

  My mother is dead, I said inside my head. I have no mother, I am an orphan.

  The image of Fitz at school appeared before me then, how believable he’d been. Instead of pain lurching inside me, I felt anger. Which one of them thought up that joke? What was wrong with them that they should care so little for another human being? I forced thoughts of my enemies aside and picked up my mother’s hand, raised it to my lips and kissed it lightly.

  After the eulogies, an old song was played and we walked to the coffin to rest our hands against it for a moment. We bowed our heads, then left the room. That was the last touch, the finale to a long life. I was positively bursting with questions – where did the coffin go, who took it, where was the crematorium, how hot did it have to be, who collected the ashes, was there a way of separating wood from bone or did all the ashes get collected, where were the ashes sent, who was responsible for all of this?

  Mum stood at the exit to the small room and shook people’s hands as they left, many of them referring to her as Trish (which she did not correct, for once in her life). I stood beside her, staring at the faces of the strangers, wondering how many of them had been close to Pa, how many of them would truly miss him. Though we had by no means been the closest of friends, and Pa had a way of making me feel so ill at ease, I knew I would miss the old man; miss his constant presence and the certainty of him toiling away in that garage, his large square frame at the dinner table, the waft of soap on his skin as we ate. I had to hand it to the old man, his final gift, the knowledge that Ma had met Hepburn – well this was just the greatest thing anyone could have done for me. This made Pa’s death endurable.

  It had been decided there would be no wake. It was easier that way, my mother had said, for all concerned. No forced conversations, no struggling to find the right thing to say. Besides, we simply couldn’t afford to have thirty people at the house, and feed and water them.

  As though it was tainted – my grandfather’s killer – I hadn’t returned to the Hepburn biography since the night Pa died, just as I hadn’t returned to school or my mum to work. We’d spent the week preparing for Friday’s funeral, moving about the house, hardly speaking. When I had placed the emergency call to her at work on Monday night, I’d spoken to her calmly and told her in a mature, matter-of-fact tone.

  ‘You have to call an ambulance, Tom!’ Her voice had been shrill, frantic.

  ‘There’s no point in that, Mum. He’s not breathing. He’s already dead.’

  ‘Can you be sure? For how long?’

  ‘I’m positive, Mum. I sat and watched him for a few minutes, I tried to wake him, I was yelling. I tried to get a pulse like they do, but I couldn’t find anything. And you know that little vein that throbs in Pa’s head all the time? Well, it’s not beating any more. Everything is just . . . still.’

  ‘Baby, you’re my brave man, you’re just so . . . What would I do without you?’

  ‘You’d be all right, Mum.’

  ‘What do you think we should do, then?’

  ‘It’s late, Mum. There’s nothing we can do. Pa looks so calm and peaceful in there, why don’t we just leave him for the night and we’ll get the morgue to come and get him in the morning?’

  ‘Is that . . . is that the right thing to do?’

  ‘I guess so. I don’t really know. It feels the right thing to do.’

  ‘I’m not gonna be able to find a replacement here, Tommy, I –’

  ‘Mum, you need to keep working. You can’t throw away your job now, you know what Roger’s like, he’ll just fire you. I’m looking after things. I’ll be okay.’

  ‘But you’re all alone . . .’

  ‘No, I’m not. Pa’s right here.’ I hadn’t thought twice about being in the house with a dead body. My mother never left me home alone, yet something about Pa’s lifeless presence must have reassured her. There was always our neighbour, Mrs B, to call in an emergency, but I didn’t view Pa’s death as one.

  When Lana got home from work a little after two in the morning, I was still wide awake, crouched over my magazines, feverishly making notations on my movie index cards.

  ‘You’ll ruin your back,’ my mother said, her voice full of fatigue. ‘That’s why you got a desk for your birthday, Tom.’

  We went to see Pa together, and stood holding hands, looking at his pristine face, all the worry taken from it, all the hard-work lines simply melted away. My mother sighed.

  ‘He looks beautiful, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You did the right thing tonight, Tommy. You made me proud, my strong man.’

  That night as we lay in bed together, my mother curled in snugly behind me, she rubbed my spine softly until she thought I had fallen asleep. A few moments later I felt her crying into the back of my head, trying hard to stifle her sobbing, but it was not long until my hair was slick with her tears. I wanted to turn around to her then, to take her into my arms and be a solid foundation, but I didn’t turn, or make a sound.

  When Roger found out, he showed he had a heart after all and gave Mum the remainder of the week off from both the butcher shop and pub. He simply said that he’d make do. From that moment on my mother behaved like a woman possessed, frantic in her organisation of the funeral and cremation. She called a funeral director first thing Tuesday morning and arranged for them to collect the body that afternoon after clearing with them that it was acceptable for her to cleanse it. I asked to help, wanting to be with her at this time, but she’d insisted she would do it alone and had closed Pa’s door behind her firmly, a bucket of scented water in one hand and freshly laundered washcloths in another. She spent close to two hours in there with her father and I heard her speaking to him occasionally, or crying, and it nearly broke my heart not to be there to help. I’d found it impossible to concentrate on magazines or movies and instead made my way around the yard, picking ripe fruit and vegetables, collecting the eggs, mowing the lawn – anything at all to keep myself occupied in the intervals between standing outside the closed bedroom door.

  Mum called the funeral home and arranged the date and time of the service. She spoke with the funeral director and laboured over the right coffin. She spent another two hours in Pa’s room choosing the right suit for him to wear – the very same one he’d worn to his retirement banquet after thirty-seven years with the company – even though she’d decided not to have an open casket. Once Pa was taken away, an eerie otherness settled over the house and Mum set to another kind of work. She went to her father’s room and folded all of his clothes meticulously, emptying his wardrobe and chest of drawers of every last thing. These she drove down to the local Salvation Army. She stripped his bed clean of linen and threw it all away. While I was feeding t
he chooks, she single-handedly dragged Pa’s heavy mattress out into the sunshine and scrubbed away at it with soap and a thick wiry brush until a white lather formed. Then she hosed it down with water warmed by the day and left it standing upright against the side of the garage, hoping the sun would be strong enough to dry it out.

  In the laundry she poured out his flagons of port and threw the empty bottles so hard into the bin they exploded like the copper bungers I’d heard older kids setting off on cracker night. One half-used cake and other unopened packets of Solvol were thrown into the bin. When we sat together to eat lunch, my mother was not mad or morose, she was simply efficient.

  ‘I never realised how much there was to do,’ she said over her corned beef sandwich. ‘It’s never-ending. I can’t see an end in sight.’

  ‘Can I help?’ I felt both useless and excluded, as though I had done something to upset her and she was punishing me by keeping me from all of the important actions and decisions.

  ‘You’re being a darling out in the yard, Tommy; let me take care of inside. I’ve been thinking, though. Over the summer, I reckon if you could attack the garage for me that would be a big help. Give it a good scrub and throw away the things we won’t need for us, just you and me?’