Absence Makes

by Bruce Menzies

  True, there was much more to play out. The main actors swirled in a vortex of emotions. It would be hard on some, particularly Peggy and Alex. Would they – could they – find space in their hearts for a father? Throughout their childhood, and extending into their adult lives, they accepted their mother’s line. Their father was dead. Now, without warning, he had emerged, like a ghost from the shadows, shattering their mother’s story – a story built on lies and half-truths. There was a lot to process, and it would take time. For their mother, it would be doubly difficult. Alice had claimed the high moral ground. For her it was all black and white. She would not relent easily. Nobody, least of all Baxter, could pressure her to accept him, a discarded and shamed husband, re-appearing unbidden after half a century. Patience and sensitivity were needed. But the boil had been lanced, offering them all an opportunity for liberation and redemption.

  Simone traced June’s circle with her finger, feeling the damp sand against her skin. Her heart felt full. June leant across and hugged her. ‘Well done,’ she said.

  ‘What about we have a pub lunch?’ Baxter suggested, after they yarned at length on the bench. ‘I’ve already arranged to meet someone at Steve’s.’

  ‘Who?’ said Ross. But his grandfather simply smiled.

  They drove to the pub. Kenny was waiting. He wore a panama hat, a striped shirt, white linen trousers and a wide smile. The three of them sat under the shade of the beer garden umbrella. Ross looked at the white foam below his grandfather’s nose and laughed.

  ‘You like your beer, Grandad?’

  ‘I do, young fellow, I do. But I have to go easy these days.’ Baxter felt he was in seventh heaven.

  ‘What about you, Kenny? What do they drink in Sydney?’

  ‘Anything and everything – except Swan lager!’ His eyes twinkled. ‘I’m a gin and tonic person, myself.’

  Their conversation flowed and ebbed, covering snatches of their lives, infiltrated with bursts of laughter and momentary pauses in which they looked at each other in a mixture of awe and wonder, as the significance of their coming together began to sink in. As he sat there and nursed his beer, Baxter felt the tremulous stirrings of a long-forgotten joy. A joy he had known far too briefly when the happiness with Alice reached its zenith.

  ‘Do you think much about her?’ Kenny tuned into his thoughts.

  ‘Who? Your mother?’ Baxter hesitated. ‘There was a time when I thought about her every day.’ His eyes moistened. ‘And now I know she’s alive, my mind turns to her a lot.’

  ‘What about you, Kenny?’ asked Ross.

  ‘Of course I do. She worked hard to keep us all together. I was probably spoiled. The others would pick on me and I’d run to Mum for consolation. But she was pretty strict with all of us. Too strict, I’d suggest. Maybe she overcompensated, being on her own.’

  Baxter said nothing.

  Kenny looked at his nephew. ‘Your father was the serious one. As he got older, I think he attempted to become the man about the house.’

  ‘He’s always been serious,’ Ross interjected. ‘Did he ever ask about…?’ He pointed to Baxter.

  ‘None of us dared. Our mother told us he died when I was a baby. She made it very clear it was not a subject for discussion.’

  ‘I hurt her badly,’ said Baxter quietly. His glass was empty. ‘She couldn’t face talking about me. Small wonder she invented that story.’

  They both looked at him. Finally it was Kenny who spoke.

  ‘I’m sure she thinks about you, Dad. She’s just too proud to admit it.’

  ‘What about Alex?’ Baxter was keen to change direction.

  Ross shook his head. ‘My father wants to bury his head in the sand. June reckons he’s simply burying his hurt. He may come around but right now he doesn’t want a bar of all this.’

  ‘You have to leave him be,’ said Baxter. ‘I’ll write to him soon and give him something to think about. He hasn’t seen the letter I sent with Simone.’

  ‘It was a lovely letter.’ Kenny had been shown a copy.

  ‘I guess so. He’s such a pain in the arse. We disagree about everything.’ Ross was unconvinced.

  Baxter and Kenny laughed and glanced fondly at one another.

  ‘Maybe that’s what happens when fathers and sons are always together. Maybe only absence makes the heart grow fonder.’

  ‘You might be on the money, Grandad. But you don’t know my father. He’s a case!’

  They both laughed again.

  ‘And you, Ross?’ Kenny winked. ‘You’re not ‘a case’, as you put it?’

  ‘I probably am.’ Ross gestured theatrically. ‘It’s possible I provoke him a bit.’

  They all laughed together.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Baxter, adopting a serious tone. ‘I can’t push Alex. I can’t push anyone. If they want to have anything to do with me, they have to come around in their own time.’

  Ross started to respond then stopped. An idea began to germinate.

  ‘June and I are going overseas in a few months. We’ll start off in London. Maybe you can come along, Grandad?’

  ‘Why would I do that? An old duffer like me.’

  ‘We could be your escorts. I’m sure June wouldn’t mind. And we could get to know the English relations.’

  ‘You’re an optimistic one. Alice made it clear to Simone she doesn’t want a bar of me.’

  ‘Grandad – time can heal. She may not even know your side of the story. I bet she would feel differently if she knew everything that happened.’

  ‘He’s right,’ said Kenny. ‘And with Vickie working on Peggy, things may already be changing.’

  ‘I don’t have a brass razoo. I can hardly afford a bus fare. How do you propose I get myself to England?’

  Kenny put his hand on his father’s shoulder. ‘Don’t trouble yourself about money. I have a bit tucked away.’

  Baxter looked at him. ‘You make a lot of dough from this advertising game?’

  ‘It’s pretty good. You have to go after it – and you have to be lucky. I’ve done all right.’ Earlier, he told them about his beginnings as a copywriter with the Sydney Morning Herald, and how he was head-hunted by an advertising agency. ‘It’s a rat race,’ he said. ‘But I like the work and it gives me a chance to be creative.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’ Baxter stroked his chin. ‘But thank you for the offer.’

  A shout from the hotel told them their lunches were ready. Steak and kidney pie and chips. Plenty of sauce. A slither of salad. Kenny smiled when he saw the food.

  ‘You both have to come to Sydney. I’ll show you around the Cross and Paddo. You can eat well there.’ He owned a small apartment above a bookshop in Darlinghurst. Baxter did not enquire whether he lived alone. That would come out, but all in good time.

  They ordered a couple more beers and another G & T for Kenny. The sun had shifted and Baxter felt its warmth on his legs. A bunch of kids on bicycles rode by, towels slung over their shoulders. He watched them dismount on the jetty and head towards the swimming baths. A light breeze drew ripples on the river. In the background he could hear a radio – or was it one of those cassette tape things? The voice sounded familiar. He looked at his son and then at his grandson, tucking into their meals. Overcome by a sense of gratitude, he closed his eyes and gave thanks.

  Ross cocked an ear. ‘It’s Baez, Grandad. She’s singing a Dylan number.’ He smiled gently at his grandfather and began to croon: ‘May you stay…for…ever…young….’

  ‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Kenny, raising his glass.

  Baxter reached out across the table and took their hands. There was no need for words. They sat enjoined, meditating upon the serendipity of their reunion, until the last pure notes disappeared into the summer sky.

  Acknowledgments & Author’s Notes

  It’s a leap of faith for a writer to entrust a manuscript to the critical eyes of others. Lyn Nunn, Christa Nicholson, Colin Taylor and Max Lewington were kind enough to read the b
ook in its earliest incarnation and their responses were both encouraging and provoking.

  A conversation with one of my coffee-mates, Joseph London, led me to Bruce Russell. He took me deeper into the art of the novel and induced me to kill a few darlings. The book is all the better for his input.

  Fellow-author and friend, Tineke Van der Eecken, offered helpful and emphatic suggestions about publication and design.

  My warm thanks and appreciation to those just mentioned and to my wife, Daniele, for her support. Once she saw that domestic duties and writing a book were not mutually exclusive and that I could manage both (admittedly with varying degrees of passion), life took on a more relaxed hue.

  I am also indebted to Ross MacLennon of Book Covers Australia and Jason Swiney and his team at Vivid Publishing for their creative assistance in making this book a reality.

  On a hot summer night in 1974, I was lucky enough to attend the Joan Baez concert in Perth. Unforgettable.

  References to Open Marriage by George O’Neill and Nena O’Neill are taken from the ABACUS edition, published by Sphere Books in 1975.

  Dumbledum Day was written by an English lawyer and lyricist, Frederick E. Weatherly (1848-1929). The composer was Hermann Lohr (1871-1943). The words are extracted from a book of sheet music kept by my grandmother, inherited from her uncle, the artist, A.E. Milbank.

  Forever Young appears on Bob Dylan’s Planet Waves album released in January 1974. Baez covered it that year in a single and also included the song on her LP, From Every Stage, released in 1976.

  Speculation about a missing grandfather and haphazard memories of the seventies inspired this story. As far as I am aware, none of the characters are ‘real’. But their lives have been lived, in many families, including my own.

  About the author

  Bruce Menzies was born in Subiaco, Western Australia. After scraping through a law degree he moved to Canberra for a stint in the Public Service, highlighted by three years in Germany. In the seventies, he graduated to an Indian ashram. Returning to Perth and later to Denmark, an idyllic hamlet on the south-coast, Bruce morphed from a lawyer into a mediator.

  He has written a magazine column as well as semi-serious articles on relationships, gender, gurus, and other taxing topics.

  In 2011, he published The Warp and the Weft, an account of his ancestors and their migration to Australia in the nineteenth century. Bruce lives in South Fremantle with his wife, Daniele. Absence Makes is his first novel.

  www.brucejamesmenzies.com