Gatherers and Hunters

by Thomas Shapcott

  As he was reaching for his carton of milk he overheard a little group of young people talking in a noisy gabble and for some reason he turned round to inspect them. There, one of the two young women more or less in control of the party, almost within touching distance, was the girl herself.

  Beatrice! He almost exclaimed it aloud, but stopped himself. Instead, he did raise himself up straight clutching his milk, and tried to catch her eye. She was too interested in the conversation going on around her to notice this white haired old man, with his red plastic basket and a one litre carton of milk in his hand.

  ‘Excuse me’, he said, too loudly. ‘Excuse me, but there’s something I wanted to ask you …’

  The other girl, closer to him, looked down. ‘You can’t reach the back shelf? Here, I can do that for you what is it you want – sliced cheese?’

  ‘No, no’ he said. ‘I’m not … it’s not … can you tell me your name?’ He had caught her attention now, the right girl.

  ‘Beg pardon? You speaking to me?’ She had a fairly broad accent, though the vocal tone was musical, almost an echo. ‘You’re a bit cheeky for an old fella. Isn’t he, Cassie’. But she relented, and was smiling (that smile! That smile!) ‘Now why’d you want to go spoiling a perfect relationship by asking for personal details, mister? You young things just won’t take no for an answer, but I tell you this. I don’t go giving my name and address to just anybody, but you can call me Trish if you want to. Now say thank you to Cassie for getting you your soapy cheese and top o’ the mornin’ and a Merry Christmas. You’re not Santa himself, in an ocker disguise, are you?’

  And they went off together, arm in arm, with the silent young men who had been standing behind them following in their wake. Charlie heard their laughter still as he sheepishly made towards the checkout, forgetting the remaining items on his list. At the top of the tiny pile in the red basket was a pack marked ‘twelve easy-peel slices of Bodalla Tasty Cheddar Cheese’.

  He hadn’t been rude, or improper in any way. He had not consciously offended her. Why was she so anti-social then? Why was she so antagonistic? Underneath the raillery of her tone he had detected some hidden rancour. Was it directed specifically at him? Or was it somehow more generalised? Was she performing for the benefit of her friend – Cassie, was it? –or for the silent youth lolling behind her, who had said nothing, who had done nothing, who had simply strolled along with the proprietary air of an Italian pimp.

  No, Charlie was being altogether too offensive. There was a streak of nastiness in him, he had to admit. It was as if he were lumping all the young people together. Making it a generational thing. Ridiculous!

  And why hadn’t he offered to explain? It would have been straightforward. Direct and simple.

  He had not even managed to get the name ‘Beatrice’ out. That might have simplified everything. She would have seen, by that name, there was someone she reminded him of, the sort of thing that surely happens all the time, especially with people around his age, nothing to be ashamed of in that. He felt entirely ashamed.

  By the time he reached his car, already over-hot in the sun, that shame had turned to anger. Strangely, though, it was directed to the first of the two young men, a person who did not at all look like the driver of the white sports car the other week.

  Swarthy.

  Her name was Trish.

  Altogether too great a leap of coincidence to think that could in any way be linked to a name like Beatrice. Patricia perhaps? And, looking at her more closely, as he had, it was clear there were other aspects of her features not at all like those he remembered.

  The eyebrows, for instance. Beatrice had dark eyebrows, but surely thicker than that. These looked, well, plucked. He couldn’t conceive of Beatrice ever considering such affectations; though he had not known her when she was a few years older, around the same age as this girl now.

  And why be so aggressive?

  He had done nothing to justify that.

  It was her scorn, her absolute scorn. That had rankled.

  +++++

  ‘Charles! Charles Brosnan that is you? Over here,’ and the plump lady with the blue rinse waved a chubby bare arm in his direction. Charlie had been sitting, finally, at the little coffee shop on Bulcock Beach, which he had decided he must return to. It was silly to allow himself to be – well – intimidated by some young thug in a white shirt and long black trousers.

  Bronco, it turned out, was not on duty.

  He looked up and saw her in her bright floral sundress and the large, rather elegant, straw hat. He could hardly miss her. She was nobody he could instantly recognise: certainly not someone out of his Melbourne past, in that rig-out. And hardly someone from his young Brisbane years. He would be unrecognisable.

  ‘Charles Brosnan, fancy seeing you here of all places!’ She had now got up and strode over, pulling out a seat for herself. ‘I am right, aren’t I? Now don’t go telling me I’ve made another mistaken identity thing, no your very look tells me I’m right. But you don’t have to look so stunned. It’s Thelma. Thelma Jennings from two doors down.’ And she laughed with genuine pleasure as Charlie, all too visibly, made the connection.

  ‘I know I know. Seeing someone out of context, it happens all the time. But I knew it was you, I recognised Charles Brosnan the instant I set eyes. What are you doing here? Oooh. Oooh idiot me, of course. Poor dear Miriam, Charles I am sooo sorry, I meant to send a condolence but you know how things, and then we did Europe and the awful Trade Tower thing came and stranded us and, one thing and another, well we were relieved to be home and when Bruce said Noosa I said Darling so here we are. Except Bruce is talking investment things with someone at Henzells and Myra and me are left twiddling our cappuccino sugars.’

  She hardly paused for breath. Charlie had pulled himself more upright and felt his spine straightening. The Woman From Next Door But One was a pain, but she and Miriam used to have a routine, when Miriam was at home, of having afternoon tea at the Moravia on Burke Road, they had been in the same Professional Women’s Association at one stage. In living memory she had moved from fashionable black to dusty bruisey colours, but not yet, in Camberwell, to peacock.

  ‘Now Charles, how about you? How are you keeping yourself? Are you looking after? I saw the house went up for sale and I had wonders but to see you all the way up here in sunny Queensland, it took the breath, but how ARE you?’

  And for a moment he feared she would lean across and give him a pout on the cheek.

  But she settled back in her chair and waved for her friend (‘Myra’) to come over. She was examining Charlie with paint-stripper eyes.

  ‘Don’t tell me. But why an out-of-the-way place like this? Unless you are a refugee from Noosa as well? You’ve got a home unit there. You’ve made a killing with real estate – just like my Bruce – and the views are marvellous aren’t they, but the weather! My dear, it’s a sauna! Still, when we go back to the saltmines we’ll be brown as bandicoots. Or whatever.’

  Charlie took a sip of his dead-cold coffee. ‘You’re right, it took me a moment to make the connection. Thelma Jennings of course. I really didn’t expect to see you in a little place like Caloundra.’ He didn’t add that Caloundra had seemed a place where his past would not catch up with him. At least, that element of the recent past. ‘I have a unit here, one of the older developments.’

  ‘You’re so wise. And I bet you offered peanuts. It’s almost like taking lollies from kiddies, the prices up here. But there you go. And are you actually living here? Or is it your little retreat, your pied-à-terre? Myra, this is Charles Brosnan, our neighbour. Our FORMER neighbour.’

  ‘How do you,’ he muttered but he was already feeling hemmed in, indeed, genuinely uncomfortable, though he couldn’t quite place why he should feel so antagonistic to Thelma Jennings who had actually been a shot in the arm for Miriam in that last year. She had jollied her along, got her out of herself, though Charlie did recall there had been some personal tragedy in her own life, that
boy in Kew who kept on until he was almost twenty-one. Thelma had a way of bringing Miriam out of herself. Miriam, who in the past had never been a one to dwell. No, he had a lot to thank Thelma for, and he must not remain grumpy.

  ‘Myra, Charles has just joined the legion of sun-seekers, he’s nosed out a unit here for almost nothing. We’re thinking of a pad somewhere around Southbank ourselves, have you considered that, or have you made a similar killing already? He’s such a quiet one, Myra. Still waters run deep, I always said that to Miriam. But, oh Charles I am sorry, I did not mean to come barging in on you dwelling on your loss and poor Miriam. We do miss her, miss her dreadfully actually, but now it’s time to keep on living and I applaud you, Charles, I envy you for your strength in making a big move like this. I never in all the years that I knew her heard Miriam even mention Queensland or the Sunshine Coast so it must be a really big thing for you, Charles, this move, getting away from … well, everything. All those memories.’

  ‘Queensland is where I grew up. I spent my youth. Or at least, until I was eighteen. So it has been a sort of return. Not an escape.’

  ‘Some things we just have to escape, I understand that Charles, but that’s not the word I would use. After someone, well special, like Miriam, I can understand the need to make a break. Make a break. Well, that almost sounds more direful than ‘escape’ doesn’t it? What is the word I am seeking? Come on Charles, you’re the Scrabble champion, what is the word I am seeking?’

  ‘I think I would say I have come to Caloundra to renew myself, Thelma. Does that seem to you ruthless? I think Miriam would understand it. It is not running away from, more a shuffling towards. At my age you don’t run, if you can help it.’ And he laughed, sealing off the conversation and the increasing closeness of her antennae, in a way that left only a polite retreat possible. There were excuses, vague indications toward watches, and no invitation for a further round of coffee.

  ‘I am keeping you, Charles. Miriam always forgave you your habit of looking at your watch, did you know that? My husband, she said, my husband lives by the clock, whereas I live by the moment as it comes. She was a wonderful person, your wife. But of course you know that. She tolerated so much. Even me, but I knew I released the girl in her, and what a wonderful girl that was. Do you know, just one month before she flew off to that Greek conference – we didn’t know, we didn’t dream – we had coffee in the Moravia and she said to me, ‘It’s Charlie I worry over, since he retired. I have to find him routines to follow. We play chess and Scrabble on alternate nights, that sort of thing.’ And all the time it was Miriam who was … but I must not go on, it is too sad, it is all too sad.’ And she dismissed him with her lipstick curved into a huge smile, or a wreath.

  Had he ever really known Thelma? He had encountered her often enough, in a hallway and vestibule sort of way. A truly horrifying thought insisted itself – had he ever known Miriam? Of course he had known HIS Miriam, but Thelma seemed to be speaking of another person altogether. One can only cling to one’s own explanation.

  As he walked, briskly he hoped, towards the foreshore path and away from the town centre, he saw the old curmudgeon (What was his name? O’Connor?) sitting at that park bench, as if he had never left it. Was it a month already? He was dressed in identical rags. It was almost pitiful, really. But Charlie recalled the vehemence and bigotry in the old boy’s voice, and the figure transformed itself into an image of stubborn insult.

  Rigid and impossible. God forbid that Charlie would ever devolve to that! The horror was: for the first time he recognised a sort of possibility.

  He veered away. But he knew if he were to live here he had to come, somehow, to terms with the locals, the regulars. He could have found plenty of old bigots like O’Connor around Melbourne, he had only to scratch the surface. But it had been possible, there, to carve out your own life, your own friends, even the suburb congenial to you. Everything was compressed up here. Close at hand. Inescapable.

  The last time he had walked this particular way back towards Westaway Towers, the weather had been noticeably cooler. Now it was oppressively sultry. He felt the sweat trickle down his back, before his shirt stuck. He was aware of the dark stains under his arms and the body odour, even though he had showered before he went out this morning.

  This morning. The supermarket and that encounter seemed now something distant, remote.

  Thelma Jennings had caught him by surprise, she had caught him out. But she had also taken his mind from the preoccupation that had been becoming a sort of idealised fantasy, of that young woman reminding him of Beatrice, a fantasy that somehow had tricked him into dreaming of all those decades back, of himself as a burgeoning young sprig.

  Thelma in that sense brought him into context. Miriam was not to be exorcised, nor should she be. Miriam was herself, her magnetic self. Thelma had been certainly wrong: it was not a running away at all; hadn’t he in his mind still shared so many things with Miriam, almost unconsciously, like the way he kept to the routine of that Bushells Espresso, or her preferred breads. Even the selection of TV channels echoed Miriam’s preference, and indeed, as he had to admit to himself, the hollow feeling of not being able to share the game of Scrabble while they watched The Bill. The shadow of Miriam was still there, all right.

  They had developed a routine, certainly, but it was an affirming thing.

  He must not allow himself to become tetchy like this.

  And he must not allow himself to return to chafing over that silly incident in the supermarket this morning. No point. No point in feeling angry at that perfectly innocent and self-centred young woman. No point in feeling angry with himself. What’s over is over. We always think of the clever reply twenty minutes after the confrontation or the irksome encounter. No point, any more, and particularly no point in willing it all back again, to brood over and to lick, like an old sore. How ridiculous.

  Thelma Jennings. What Miriam always enjoyed about Thelma was her ebullience, she was the world’s most unselfconscious extrovert.

  But when she had first hailed him, waving that large fleshy hand and shaking her thick coloured mass of hair, he knew what had been his first, surprised, thought.

  ‘Is that Beatrice? Beatrice in her maturity, the Beatrice who was the same age, the same generation as myself, old Charlie?

  +++++

  He had automatically wandered on from the end of the promenade, through the lightly timbered picnic area and then through a little break in the retaining fence onto the beach itself. It was at the point where the Stillwater of the Passage swept over towards the tip of Bribie Island and formed a wide bank, the other side of which was surf.

  He was tempted to take off his shoes, but then decided otherwise and stomped gingerly through the soft sand until he came to a groin of black volcanic stones and here he did give up on the thought of trudging much further so he ­clambered up a set of rough stairs and found himself at a turnaround for vehicles; bitumen and the first clustering sets of low-rise units. A sign said Dingle Avenue and he knew this led uphill to the ridge and, in a little way, his set of ­apartments.

  The climb was steeper than he realised and he found himself puffing and looking stolidly at the ground in front of him as he pushed himself, foot by foot, up the steep grade, keeping mainly to the grassy sward rather than the road.

  Which was why, as he came to a pause at the higher ring­around, he was so surprised when he almost bumped into the little group striding down from the shops. Beatrice was among them.

  ‘Excuse us, sir,’ one of them jumped aside, onto the road, to avoid a collision. ‘Oh, it’s him. It’s your admirer, Trish!’ And they all laughed and waved to Charlie as they bounced around him, leaving him stranded.

  She had gone on with them, and he could distinguish her laughter from all the others. She did not look back.

  Still breathing heavily, eventually he continued his trek uphill, the last leg of that climb. He was thinking nothing, nothing. He was concentrating on his climb, one f
oot after the other, counting the number of steps now, as if that might somehow ease the distance.

  Those young people. As if they owned the footpath, the whole street and no doubt they would be sprawling out on the sand shortly, littering it with their presence and their papers and plastic castaways and their towels and beach umbrellas and whatever else made them territorial.

  She had seen him. She had recognised him. She had ignored him.

  That was the order of things, of course it was and it would remain that way. Until he could get the opportunity – ­privately, he now realised, without her cohorts urging her on to adopt that defensive, yes defensive, stance.

  The question was so simple, merely to satisfy himself that the amazing coincidence between this girl and Beatrice would be explained by some genetic inheritance. She would be curious, and probably slightly excited at the accident, and might be able to tell him about her grandmother (he had ­convinced himself it must be that) and where she lived, what she had done in her life, where she had finally settled.

  When he did reach the top of the incline, instead of taking the easy gradient on to his building, Charlie made a quick decision. He was glad he had worn his sun hat. It was sticky and oppressive now, approaching 11.30. He went downhill again. He made his long away to the approaches of Kings Beach. He guessed already that the little group would not head right for the main surfing area with the lifesavers’ hut and the green parkland, nor up to the rocks and the artificial rock pool. They would have erected their shade among the further dunes, back toward the Passage a bit. More privacy.

  He was right. He congratulated himself on his acuity, but remembered, of course, that back in the old days they themselves had sometimes chosen that section, though back then nobody would have dared to sunbake topless.

  For a minute or two he stood, leaning his hand on a splintery fencepost dividing off the dunes from the encroaching flats. These had not been here before. But he caught sight of Beatrice running back from the surf with one of the young men. She beat him, and threw herself down on the sand near a blue and red umbrella and then with a towel she vigorously mopped her hair and under her arms. Charlie watched every move.