The First Week

by Margaret Merrilees

  ‘Charlie did all right at school?’

  ‘Yes. He was a bit quiet after Mac died. But his reports were good, like they always had been.’

  ‘So he’s the clever one?’

  ‘Charlie runs rings round Brian. Brian’s clever in other ways. With machinery. And he’s a great footballer.’ Why was she feeling defensive about Brian? Charlie was the one in trouble.

  ‘Does Charlie play sport?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Marian had a flash of a wet Tuesday evening. Standing at the sink and hearing Mac and the boys in the hall. I’m not coming to footy training, Dad. Her neck muscles tightened all over again.

  ‘He doesn’t like sport.’

  ‘How did Charlie get on with his teachers?’

  ‘They never complained. Not that I remember.’

  ‘So he didn’t get into fights?’

  ‘No. Not at school.’ She caught Jennifer’s eye and realised how that sounded.

  ‘Not at school,’ Jennifer said. ‘But at home?’

  This wasn’t fair. She was making Marian say more than she wanted to. What if it made things worse for Charlie?

  ‘I’m not saying it was anything major. Little things, like all families.’

  Did Jennifer have children? Marian checked the left hand holding the clipboard near the fish. No ring.

  ‘Brothers fighting?’ Jennifer asked. ‘The way they do?’

  ‘Charlie’s so quick. Sharp. He gets at Brian. You know? Brian’s bigger. But slow.’ It was all right to tell Jennifer, a relief. Just two brothers.

  ‘And their father?’

  Oh. Marian peered more closely at the carpet. The red was made up of shield shapes with a curly border around the edge. Blood red.

  ‘Did Charlie have a good relationship with his father?’

  The rug was ten shields long.

  ‘Mac didn’t understand Charlie. Charlie made him mad. Charlie saw things.’

  ‘What kind of things?’

  ‘I don’t mean bad things. I mean … he saw where Mac was touchy. How to needle him. Charlie became a vegetarian.’ Marian stopped. The words sounded so trivial.

  ‘As a statement?’

  ‘Yes.’ Marian was grateful. ‘That’s it. He didn’t talk much. Then he’d make an announcement. Something that would get right up Mac’s nose. Something about war, maybe. Vietnam.’

  ‘Mac was in Vietnam?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Charlie was anti-war?’

  ‘Yes.’ Was he? Or was it just part of being … opposed.

  ‘So what happened when he made his statement about Vietnam?’

  ‘Mac blew up,’ Marian hesitated, ‘and hit Charlie.’

  She watched Jennifer write a few words under the fish.

  ‘Mac wasn’t usually violent. It only happened a few times.’ She listened to her own voice, apologising. But she’d said it now. No use trying to unsay it.

  ‘Did he ever hit you?’

  ‘No.’ Not when he was awake. For years he had nightmares. Sometimes she’d wake to find him trying to wrestle her out of the bed.

  Marian’s hands were trembling. She clasped them together.

  She’d torn it now.

  Jennifer would think it was all Mac’s fault and put him down as a mad Vietnam vet. She’d want to know about every little fight. But it wasn’t like that. Mac was a good father.

  Even as the thoughts passed through her mind, Marian saw how useless they were. All her married life she’d covered for Mac, made excuses, made up to people he’d upset. What for?

  She didn’t have to do that any more.

  Jennifer put her pad on the desk and reached for a paper bag, rustling inside it for a lolly. She offered the bag to Marian. ‘Barley sugar. I keep it for my blood sugar. Have one.’

  Marian took a lolly, unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth. The rush of sugar made her feel lighter, more purposeful.

  Jennifer was sucking and reading her notes.

  ‘You said Brian and Charlie had a fight last time Charlie was at the farm. What was that about?’

  ‘Charlie found out we were selling the old ewes for the Middle-East trade.’

  ‘Live exports?’

  Marian nodded reluctantly, not wanting to hear any city ideas.

  ‘Charlie didn’t like that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So he’s a pacifist and a vegetarian and cares about animal rights?’

  Marian nodded again and waited for Jennifer to ask the inevitable question. So how come …?

  Charlie didn’t like people. Marian saw it clearly, sharply in focus. Charlie thought people were destructive. White people anyway.

  He didn’t like his own people.

  The idea was so compelling that Marian opened her mouth to explain. But Jennifer was looking at her watch. ‘Sorry. We’ll have to leave it there.’

  That was the end?

  Jennifer got up and waited for Marian to do the same.

  Had Marian been talking too much, wasting her time?

  ‘You’ve been very helpful, Marian. Thank you so much. I’ll ring you if there’s anything else.’

  Marian let the psychologist steer her out. The cream carpet again, so impractical.

  ‘Take care of yourself,’ Jennifer was saying. ‘There’s nothing wrong with sleeping. But you might want to see a counsellor.’

  ‘Um …’

  ‘Do you know of anyone down your way?’

  ‘Oh no.’ We’re not like that, she wanted to protest, not people who need counsellors.

  ‘Ask your GP.’ Jennifer stepped back and began to close the door. ‘Bye now.’

  Marian lifted her hand. ‘Bye …’ But her voice was drowned out by the click of the door catch.

  The afternoon light was still bright outside the building. Marian stood blinking on the footpath.

  Was that all?

  Nothing about Charlie’s babyhood, or all the years after that. How could anyone possibly understand him with only those few bits to go on?

  She hadn’t said enough.

  All the stories that would have described Charlie properly. How kind he could be. The sweetness of his smile, his real smile.

  She’d thought a psychologist would want to know all that.

  But of course the woman couldn’t, didn’t have time.

  Marian started back into the building. I should have convinced her.

  But what about?

  Perhaps a psychologist saw so many people that she stopped asking why.

  Marian made herself walk away. The Kings Park trees weren’t far and would be comforting.

  Each footstep fitted inside one paving stone. But on every third footfall she had to straddle a crack. She tried to make the steps regular, but now and then had to add a skip to get back into rhythm.

  A man in a suit swerved to avoid her.

  Marian put her head down and walked quickly on. There were things to think about. Mac. The army. Their marriage.

  She went back to counting her steps. One two three. One two three and … One two three.

  The edge of the lawn made a horizon with the river below. From here the glass towers of the city looked clean, glinting in the light, as though they’d been polished with window cleaner. Tiny cars swarmed in neat lines around the curves and across the bridge, the spaghetti of roads that linked the city and the river. The cars were ants, surging along an ant trail, intent on their tiny business. If Marian put her giant foot down across the freeway they’d all pile up and fall into the river.

  What would happen when the world ran out of oil? Would all the cars vanish and the freeway stop?

  There was a lot of land in that long ribbon of bitumen. It would make good market gardens—a strip of green, people working away with spades and hoes and a track down the middle for carts.

  But would there be enough water? You could set up hydraulic pumps to get it up from the river. But the river water would be too salty.

 
Well, they’d discover more and more things that could tolerate salt.

  Marian sat down in a rotunda. This Nook of Rest was erected by members of the Eleventh and Second Eleventh Battalions Association to the memory of comrades who died in two wars.

  War. For her it was a thing that happened somewhere else. Bombs raining down. How would it be to watch everything blow up around you, the swirls of freeway turning into rubble and clouds of dust? The glass towers collapsing downwards, like New York.

  It was odd. You’d expect them to fall over sideways, like a chopped tree. But instead they settled in on themselves.

  How would it feel to kill a person? To take a living breathing human and stop him in his tracks. Drop him. Snuff him out.

  Apparently it didn’t take much. A karate chop, a cosh to the head, a quick stab. A small bullet hole. Marian thought of the body jerking as the bullet slammed home. Like a sheep.

  She’d been there when her father died, twenty-four hours when she’d thought every laboured breath was the last. There’d be a long pause, then another noisy breath. And then suddenly the pause was final. The last breath was indistinguishable from all the others, except that it didn’t have another one after it. Silence with no end.

  Then the war was over they said at school, as though that was an end to all the strife. But in fact it was only another beginning. When the soldiers came home they brought a load of new problems.

  Their job was to build a new future. But building wasn’t what they did. The rotundas and war memorials weren’t enough. It was crashing, smashing, burning, digging-out work they wanted. What they did, every time, was clear more land.

  Marian had seen it with Mac, years after Vietnam. Roaring machines, bulldozers, tractors with great chains to drag down the trees. At the end of the day he’d be filthy, covered in sweat, muscles aching. But still it wasn’t enough to drown out the bombs that fell in his dreams at night.

  Meanwhile the clearing left the naked soil exposed, so that it blew away in the next wind and washed away in the next rain. And then up from below, freed from its deep prison, came the salt.

  The only time Mac had ever mentioned the army it wasn’t noise that he talked about, it was silence.

  Anzac Day was wet that year. The boys were watching telly, and Brian was old enough to ask about the men marching. Marian had already come to dread Anzac Day, tiptoeing round the house, making sure the radio wasn’t on. But Mac seemed calm enough in the face of Brian’s chatter.

  ‘I used to go on the march when I was your age,’ he said. ‘Every year, with your Granddad. We went up to the city for it. And the dawn service in Kings Park.’

  Marian was surprised into a question. ‘How come you stopped going?’

  She saw his body tighten and his hands curl into fists and she reached instinctively to put Brian behind her. But at the same time she saw Mac’s face. The unhappiness in it appalled her. He left the room without saying anything.

  For days she tried to think of a way of getting him to talk but he was elusive, always busy somewhere else. Then he announced that they needed a break from the farm.

  They stayed three nights in a caravan between sand hills. The boys spent all day on the beach, and Mac, unexpectedly relaxed, chatted to the other campers. Mostly Marian was happy reading and dozing in a sheltered spot in the dunes, but she did make one friend, a lively single mother called Julie. Nothing special, but it was good to walk on the beach, talk about babies, schools, have a few laughs.

  The third night, after the kids were in bed, there was a gathering around a brazier, friendly, drunken. Marian didn’t find it easy to join in that sort of thing, probably didn’t drink enough. At eleven, when the voices were getting louder and the jokes more raucous, she went to check on the boys, then fell asleep herself on the narrow bunk.

  When she woke in the quiet early hours of the morning Mac wasn’t there. Half asleep, but worried, she pulled on a jumper and crept outside. The quarter-moon was going down over the ocean and the camp was quiet, only one light showing in Julie’s caravan. Marian walked over with a confused idea of asking about Mac, and peeped through a gap in the curtains.

  She drew in her breath sharply. The bed was under the window and she had a clear view of tangled limbs and a jiggling female bottom. The man’s bony feet, toes up, were braced against the mattress right under her nose. Marian stepped back hastily, her mind doing impossible mathematics. There shouldn’t be a man in Julie’s caravan and there should be a man in Marian’s.

  Mac.

  See nothing. Wipe it out.

  With one thought only, to escape, she stumbled through the dark. Bushes whipped at her arms and legs, loose sand dragged at her feet. Finally she felt firmer sand, wetness, the lapping water. Without hesitation she stripped and plunged into the sea.

  The cold water brought her back to herself. Seizing her clothes she ran through the sandy scrub to the van, teeth chattering.

  By morning Mac was snoring in the fourth bunk.

  Marian waited till they were home, sitting on the sofa, the boys in bed.

  ‘Mac?’ There was no air in her lungs and it was hard to form words. But she knew that if they didn’t tackle this there’d be no going on.

  ‘What is it, love?’

  The love nearly undid her. He didn’t often use endearments. But then she was angry. Love. All very well now.

  ‘I know where you were last night.’

  She thought he might deny it, be self-righteous, shout. She still half-hoped that he might have an explanation. But instead he crumpled in on himself, clasped his arms around his body and started to rock, eyes closed, face contorted with grief.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Marian was confused, and then angry. First he stepped carelessly out of their marriage, threw her to one side. And then, when she longed to scream and cry and demand apologies, he cut the ground from under her.

  Did he expect her to comfort him?

  But as she watched him, her anger ebbed away.

  Stretching out a tentative hand she cradled the back of his head. He groaned and reached towards her with both arms, pushing his head into her breast, an oversized parody of a toddler trying to climb into her lap.

  The clumsiness of it, the appeal, moved her and she stroked his back. His eyes were squeezed shut and he made no sound but she could feel the battle in his body, his whole will focused on forcing down the sobs, preventing himself from weeping.

  Eventually he quietened and looked up at her.

  ‘I’m scared of the night time,’ he said. ‘When it’s quiet. In the silence, that’s when they get you.’

  ‘Who does?’

  But he sat up, ignoring her question.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I never want to hurt you.’

  The anti-climax was painful but she hurried to meet him halfway. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘It’s okay.’

  Over time she understood that it wasn’t okay. The thing with Julie, that didn’t matter. The outbursts didn’t matter. What mattered was that he wouldn’t talk and couldn’t cry, wouldn’t let himself. That he would never trust her that much.

  Years later when they carried him out to the ambulance she saw his lifeless feet sticking up at the end of the stretcher. In that moment she remembered looking through the caravan window. The driver must have noticed her expression. He tucked a blanket down around Mac’s legs.

  A masked man advanced on the rotunda, knapsack spray on his back, nozzle held in front of him like a sword. Bending over he sprayed the weeds around the edge of the paving.

  Marian retreated back up the hill to the Court of Contemplation. A flame burned on a tripod in the middle of a still pool. There must be a gas bottle underneath, or a pipe.

  The names of battlefields were listed around a curved wall. Ypres. Tobruk. Borneo.

  You gave birth to them and you loved them and you wiped their eyes and their noses and their bottoms. You only ever wanted them to be happy. B
ut instead they went off and killed other women’s babies.

  And if they didn’t get killed themselves then they came back as ghosts.

  Next to the wishing well a tourist, ignoring the stretches of kangaroo paws and everlastings, was taking a close-up of a bed of pansies. Beyond the pansies sat Queen Victoria, flanked by four cannons, one covering each point of the compass. Marian crossed out of the park and walked back through West Perth until she came to shops.

  She needed a birthday present for Tara. Probably a present for Todd too, but Tara’s birthday was next week. A present that Michelle would approve. A peace offering, a start towards being kinder to Michelle.

  The first few shops were full of adult clothing, but in the next window was a row of small baskets each holding a stuffed animal.

  From inside the shop Marian could see that they were puppies, soft and very cute, but their eyes were closed. Would that be frustrating? Hard to know with Tara. Her terror of dogs, even of old Jeb, might outweigh the cuteness. But she was also fascinated by Jeb and couldn’t keep away.

  Marian picked up the black and white puppy.

  ‘Sweet, isn’t it?’

  The speaker was a woman Marian’s own age with a hard face and short bleached hair. She didn’t look as though she’d ever cuddled a toy in her life. Her badge said May.

  ‘Um. Yes. I’m trying to find something for my granddaughter.’

  ‘Lovely,’ the woman said briskly. ‘Just the thing.’

  Marian looked at the toy in her hands. May scooped up its basket and ushered Marian towards the cash register.

  ‘But …’ Marian pulled herself up. ‘How much is it?’

  ‘$39.95.’

  ‘$39.95? You’re kidding.’

  But May stood her ground between Marian and the door.

  ‘That includes the basket,’ she said firmly.

  ‘Oh well.’ Marian lost interest in fighting. That was her last fifty-dollar note, she’d have to find a bank.

  ‘They breathe, you know. Did you see?’ May paused with the toy half way into a bag.

  ‘Umm …’

  ‘Here. I’ll throw in a battery for you.’ Turning the toy over, May opened a small flap, stuck in a battery and pushed the whole thing across the counter. Marian saw with horror that the puppy’s belly had started to rise and fall. A corpse reanimated.