The Memory Tree

by Tess Evans

  Zav is enjoying himself. ‘So why didn’t he kick any goals in the grand final? What was it? Six misses and one hit the post. He has a good day every now and then and everyone thinks he’s God Almighty.’

  Will buys the next round, grinning widely. Others join the argument.

  My dad saw Coleman at his best.

  You can’t go past McKenna.

  A champion is a champion—that’s what I always say.

  Zav is surprised when the barman calls ‘time’ and is still making a point as he climbs the stairs with Will and Scottie. ‘That bloke who reckoned he played for St Kilda in the fifties. Even he agreed that today’s game is better.’

  Will and Scottie exchange glances as they say goodnight.

  Up here, summer can linger well into May, and their final morning holds the promise of another hot day. They have no fish to show for their endeavours, but the lazy days, the easy mateship of the bar, the desultory conversation by the river are all therapeutic in their own way. Zav has enjoyed doing something normal, and for a time feels the stirring of hope. Bush hat pulled low over his eyes, he sits on his little canvas stool and stares at the brown water, his mind blessedly blank.

  It’s strange, but the river doesn’t trigger thoughts of me. Just as well, in my opinion. My father’s not really equipped to handle such thoughts. I’ve been bundled away out of sight, like an object in one of Sealie’s boxes—stored in a limbic attic. Zav knows I’m there, but there’s no space in the living room of his mind. That’s still cluttered with the old furniture—humid jungle, rotting vegetation, a damp, grave-shaped home where scorpions and spiders lie in wait. The sound of guns. The cries of men. Zav’s living room is peopled with pyjama’d ghosts who tread softly in rubber shoes through terrain where no horizon is visible.

  No room here for one small baby.

  I lie in my box, biding my time.

  But now, here by the river, my father is the man he might have been—just for a moment, mind you.

  Tomorrow, they head for home. Will and Scottie look at each other covertly. In that whole time, neither of them has spoken of Hal.

  Scottie breaks the silence. ‘If we don’t catch something today, we’ll go home with an empty Esky.’

  ‘Brenda reckons she won’t gut a fish anyway.’ Will turns to Zav. ‘What about Sealie? Can she gut fish?’

  ‘Dunno. Probably not.’ The word ‘home’ reverberates in Zav’s head; he can feel the blood begin its familiar pounding in his ears. He has to tell them he can’t go back. Won’t go back. ‘Hey, guys,’ he’ll say. ‘I might stay on for a few days. The pub’s turned out alright.’

  He begins. ‘Hey, guys . . .’

  But then, why should he be driven from his home, his safe place? He has faced worse than a crazy old man. It’s a big house. He has his bedroom. He can eat in the round room. He doesn’t have to talk to his father, or even see him. ‘I think I made that very clear to Sealie.’

  Will looks up from winding his reel. ‘What?’

  Zav is unaware that he has spoken aloud. ‘Nothing.’

  Why doesn’t my father confide in his friends? Why don’t they encourage him to share his fears? I’m beginning to lose patience. Sometimes I’d like to shake some common sense into the lot of them. I really would.

  2

  ‘I CAN TAKE HAL OUT, if you like.’

  Sealie is tempted by Godown’s offer, but it would just put things off. ‘Thanks, but we might as well get it over with.’

  Will rings to say they are about an hour from home. ‘We’ll stop at the fish shop for dinner.’ The attempted joke falls flat as Sealie, her thoughts racing, says she has already prepared dinner. Then, ‘Oh—sorry. Very funny.’

  ‘Do you want me to stay?’ Godown forgets for a moment that Zav will have nothing to do with him.

  She squeezes his hand. ‘No. Thanks anyway.’

  As the car pulls up in the drive, Hal peers out the window. A tall man climbs out of the back seat and goes with the driver to the boot. The two shake hands and the car drives off. Hal puts on his glasses. Can that stranger be Zav? He’s so thin. When did his hair become grey? And that stoop! Hal is shocked. The gradual process of time has accelerated, and the fine, athletic, young man he last saw in uniform is tragically middle-aged. He watches as brother and sister embrace briefly in the driveway and hears the front door open. Here is his opportunity at last. His opportunity to explain himself to the son who has every reason to hate him.

  There is opportunity but Hal’s will is frozen. He is physically unable to take the seven steps to the door. Yes. He knows it takes seven steps from window to door. One step more than his room at Aradale. He wants so much to be back in the safety and certainty that Aradale provided. Some patients spent time in the community—doing a little shopping, going to the cinema, watching or even playing in the local sports teams. They could never persuade Hal to participate in any of these activities, and now he is singularly unsuited to life outside an institution. This room is his haven. The smaller the better. He needs swaddling.

  ‘Where is he?’ Zav expects his father to materialise like a malevolent ghost.

  ‘In his room.’ Sealie answers the question implicit in his raised eyebrows. ‘The one he moved into when Mum died.’

  ‘Locked?’

  ‘No. I’ve got the key.’

  ‘Don’t forget to lock your door tonight.’

  They’ve had this conversation before. ‘I tell you he’s not dangerous.’

  ‘We all thought that once.’

  ‘He eats in the kitchen at five thirty. He’s finished by a quarter past six. I eat later.’

  ‘I’ll eat with you.’

  Despite himself, Zav can’t resist taking a look as Hal goes down for dinner. He sees an old, old man, much shorter than he remembers. He notes the bald, freckled head, the uncertain gait. Hal holds onto the banister as he treads carefully down the stairs, pausing before he places his foot as though he’s testing its stability. Zav feels a brief surge of pity, but the habit of hate is too strong. His father deserves every infirmity time has cursed him with. Zav is very sure of one thing. That shambling demeanour conceals unimaginable evil.

  Hal spoons up his soup and gnaws at his bread while Sealie bustles about with a frypan.

  ‘Zav’s home, then?’ He asks the question without meeting her gaze. Stares at his spoon as he mechanically scoops up the vegetable-laden broth.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’ll eat later?’

  ‘We always eat later.’ She feels the need to establish the sibling bond, confront her father with the long history she and Zav have shared.

  Hal finishes his meal without further comment beyond wishing his daughter goodnight before heading for the shower.

  Sealie had neglected to mention this part of Hal’s routine and Zav finds himself caught between bathroom and stairs as his father comes back from his shower. Seeing his son, Hal stops, towel draped over one thin arm. He has taken off his shirt, and his singlet reveals grizzled hairs and his sunken, old-man’s chest.

  ‘Zav. Let me . . .’

  ‘Too late.’ He almost says ‘Dad’ but the word catches in his throat. He continues down the stairs to tell Sealie he’s not hungry. She offers to bring some soup up to his room but he seats himself at the table and slurps it up in great, unmannerly gulps. Brother and sister eat their meal without speaking.

  ‘Thanks, Little Sis,’ Zav says wiping his mouth with a napkin.

  Sealie appreciates the apology implicit in this form of address. ‘No worries, Big Bro.’

  He pecks her cheek. ‘Promise you’ll lock your door.’

  Before settling for the night, Zav checks his room as usual then turns the key in the newly installed lock.

  Sealie, feeling guilty, locks her door too.

  Half an hour later, Hal, preparing to settle for the night, curses his old man’s bladder as he reluctantly climbs from his bed and pads down the hall to the lavatory. Brother and sister, each in their
locked rooms, tense, then sigh with relief as they hear the flush. They turn over to sleep but are alert again as the shuffling footsteps pass Hal’s room and approach their own. Zav sits bolt upright and Sealie slides down under the covers waiting for the door handle to turn.

  But the footsteps pass and go down along the short passageway to the main bedroom. A door opens and shuts.

  Hal switches on the light and looks at the spacious room. The double bed is still there, its blue, padded quilt faded to a soft sky-grey. On the heavy, mahogany dressing table are the silver-backed brush and mirror he gave Paulina for her twenty-fifth birthday. He picks up the brush. Someone has kept it polished. He’s glad not to be faced with years of tarnish. Paulina could have been here only a few moments ago. He remembers the weight of her hair falling smooth and shining as he rhythmically plied this very brush. They often made love after he brushed her hair. At those times their lovemaking was languid and gentle as they moved, by incremental caresses to a blissful climax. He would then brush her hair a second time and she’d twist it into a plait before they kissed goodnight. After nights like this, they both awoke with a lingering smile.

  Hal sits on the bed, then lies down on the left side as he always had. ‘I’ll spend one more night here,’ he promises his wife. ‘But not just yet.’

  Sealie and Zav hear their father as he closes the door quietly and shuffles back down the hall. He passes his room and continues on down the stairs where they hear him moving about the house.

  Godown’s room. Mrs Mac’s. Hal knows they are married now and in one of the few times he has faltered in his delusions, wonders if he hasn’t been mistaken about his housekeeper. He peers into her old room. The bed is stripped; there’s nothing on the dressing table. The only remaining ornament is a bedside lamp. Hal tries to remember what the room had been like when it was occupied. He fails because he only saw it once, the day he and Godown cleansed the house. It had always been her private domain. She, who had lived nearly twenty years in someone else’s house tending to someone else’s family, was entitled to this one, small space. There is no sense of her here. But her image emanates from other places in the house. There she is mixing a cake in the kitchen. Making tea. There she is watching Get Smart with the family, laughing fit to kill. Hal watches a shadowy figure coming in with the washing; plying the iron with swift, firm strokes while Godown sings his Protestant hymns. He sees her gentleness as she bathes the children’s wounds; hears her sharpness at any perceived unfairness to Zav.

  Had he been mistaken? She had just been getting the washing, Godown had told him. ‘Why would I marry a woman who was plotting against you?’ he said. ‘She’s loyal through and through.’

  Hal ponders these words as he follows his vision of Mrs Mac through the night-bound house. He looks out at the magnolia, faintly spattered with moonbeam. It was she who had roused him from the paralysis of grief to tend to his children. It’s autumn, the season of calm and there are no voices to batter his mind with uncertainty. He is sure now that he has been mistaken about Mrs Mac and feels an urgent need to make amends.

  There’s a phone extension in the kitchen, and closing the door, he switches on the light and looks up the number.

  ‘Hello?’ Godown’s voice is husky with sleep. ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s me. I need to speak to Mrs Mac.’

  ‘Hal? Is that you? You want to speak to Eileen? It’s after one o’clock.’

  ‘Have to tell her I’m sorry.’

  ‘Tell her in the mornin’. She’s asleep.’

  ‘No, I’m not. Who is it?’

  Hal can hear her voice in the background. He shouts to make her hear. ‘I want to say I’m sorry. For taking against you. Are you there? Let me speak to her!’

  ‘For pity’s sake—here she is.’ Godown hands the phone to his wife, hoping it’s the right thing to do.

  ‘Mrs Mac. They deceived me. You were my friend. I’m sorry.’ Hal’s voice is increasingly wild. ‘You have to forgive me. You have to.’

  Zav and Sealie, hearing the raised voice, jump out of bed and run down the stairs. By the time they reach the kitchen, Hal has hung up.

  ‘I’ve just been talking to Mrs Mac. She’ll be over tomorrow for a game of cribbage.’ Brother and sister look at each other and Zav swivels abruptly and returns to his room. Hal is in a state of excitement, so Sealie makes some hot chocolate. He drinks it like an obedient child, but his heart is still beating fast with anticipation.

  ‘We must have cake,’ he says. ‘Mrs Mac likes cake with her tea.’

  When Mrs Mac arrives for that first game, Godown and Sealie hover in the background like parents of children on a play-date. Mrs Mac hangs back a little. She has not seen Hal since the day he threw her out of this very house. Two frail bodies. Two old faces. But recognisable.

  ‘Mrs Mac. Welcome,’ Hal says gravely.

  ‘Mr R, how are you?’

  ‘Very well. And you?’

  They dance around each other like boxers, wary of a sudden punch.

  ‘You’ve changed your hair.’

  Mrs Mac pats her stylish cut, no longer grey, but L’Oreal Light Champagne. She looks younger than I expected, thinks Hal. She always seemed older than me but she probably wasn’t much older than Paulina.

  Marriage has agreed with Mrs Mac. She still looks pretty old to me, but she’s lost that hausfrau look. Today, Mrs Mac is a smart, elderly woman, still thin, but with a straight back and a keen eye which scans my grandfather’s face, seeking the man she once knew. The years have been unkind to him, she thinks, but says, ‘I’ll make some coffee before we start.’

  She is taking down the coffee pot before Sealie remembers that this woman is now a guest. She hurries out to the kitchen. ‘I’ll make the coffee,’ Sealie says. ‘And I’ve made a cake.’

  The two women look at each other with embarrassed smiles. It would be so easy to fall back into their old roles.

  ‘I hardly recognised him,’ Mrs Mac says, and leaving Sealie to the coffee making, returns to where Hal has set up the card table.

  ‘Fifteen one, fifteen two.’ Hal is enjoying the game. He remembers the Canasta Crew at Aradale and wonders where they all are now. Mad Mollie had no family left. She’d cried when they took her away. To a nice, shared house in Ararat, they told Hal, but he remains wary—still unsure of whom he can really trust. Mrs Mac has always been a sensible soul, and he seeks her opinion as he used to in the old days.

  ‘My friend, Mad Mollie—I used to play cards with her. They reckon they were taking her to nice house in Ararat.’

  ‘Fifeen five . . .’ Mrs Mac looks up. ‘That sounds like a good idea.’

  ‘Do you think that’s what they did?’ Hal peers at her anxiously through his glasses.

  ‘Of course they did. We read about that sort of thing in the paper. Nice, shared houses. That’s what they say.’

  Hal is pathetically grateful to hear this. ‘She was my friend. She didn’t mind . . . some people minded. They wouldn’t talk to me.’

  Mrs Mac is relieved to find that she can speak to Hal. That the pain of that terrible deed and her own guilt is now a dull ache. When she thinks of me, and she has done so increasingly since Hal’s homecoming, there is a deep sadness. If only . . . She used to flay herself with those words, but now she has reached a time of life where she accepts that the past is immutable.

  ‘Fifteen seven.’ I can do this, she thinks. ‘You could come to our place next time,’ she says. ‘A change of scenery might be nice.’

  Alice has had a mild stroke so Mrs Mac is preparing a plate of sandwiches for their lunch. ‘I was wondering if you’d like a game of five hundred on Tuesday.’ She looks sideways at her sister, whose body stiffens.

  ‘I don’t know how you can think of such a thing,’ Alice replies. ‘After the way he treated you. And that poor little girl.’

  ‘He was sick, Alice. You know that.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t bear him anywhere near me.’

  Mrs Mac
takes this as a rebuke but in deference to her sister’s poor health, chooses not to respond. Nevertheless, it hurts. Is her moral compass so far awry that she can play cards and drink tea with a murderer?

  ‘The Lord commands us to forgive,’ Godown tells her when she broaches the subject with him. ‘But it’s more than that. We know, we seen with our own eyes that Hal was a sick, sick man. He was fightin’ the voices in his head. Weren’t the real Hal that done it. That’s why there was never no trial.’

  This confirms her own judgement. ‘You’re right,’ she says, squeezing his hand. ‘We’ll stick by him—and the children, too, of course.’

  Dear Mrs Mac. My father and Sealie are still her children. That alone is enough to ensure that she would continue to see her troubled Mr R.

  Hal has lived with routine for so long, there is a need to establish a new one. Sealie is happy for him to continue his early dinner. That avoids conflict with Zav. She puts a little television in his room and he watches the news, Catalyst and Blue Heelers but avoids sitcoms. They just aren’t funny any more. Not like I Love Lucy, Get Smart, Fawlty Towers—they were a hoot. Nothing like that now. He still reads in bed and switches out the light at exactly ten past ten. It worries him that the clock might lose or gain time so he checks it every evening when the news comes on. With the later bedtime, he gets up at eight and comes down for breakfast after his shower. Sealie and Zav have already eaten by then.

  He spends the rest of his morning in the garden and most afternoons in his room, watching DVDs. Monday is always 2001: A Space Odyssey; Wednesdays are reserved for Star Wars and Fridays for Fawlty Towers. He watches each of them over and over in rapt silence, taking a half-hour interval when Sealie brings up his afternoon tea. His routine varies only in the type of biscuits he finds on his tray. Sometimes there’s cake. This departure from the norm rattles him the first couple of times, but eventually he absorbs the random appearance of cake as part of his predictable day.

  Twice a week, Godown picks him up and takes him back to his house where they play cards. They can’t find anyone willing to make a fourth for five hundred, so they play three-handed canasta or poker. Hal and Mrs Mac enjoy an occasional game of cribbage and Godown provides a commentary as they move the picks around the board. Hal plays these games with fierce concentration and little humour. Even when the lingering warmth of autumn fades, and his winter depression sets in, he continues with his routine. The doctor adjusts his medication so his depression is milder than it might have been. The voices are subdued to a low rumbling, like distant thunder.