Читать книгу The Household Guide to Dying - Debra Adelaide - Страница 15

The centre of Amethyst was in a hollow, streets angling down towards the main roads, the clusters of shops. The streets were full of enormous trees and then, on the west of town, there were large open spaces like natural parklands along which sauntered a lazy river, bordered with willows and reeds. In autumn, the place was enchanting. In the cooler months it was perfect, and in summer it was shady enough to give the illusion of coolness. Along the main street into town the palms were enormous, dense, and in the late afternoon crammed with brightly coloured parakeets monstering the fruits in a cacophony of greed. They shot back and forth across the road boldly, forcing me to steer the car from side to side to avoid them.

The Paradise Reach Motel, a small family business, was still there. It had quiet, spacious rooms, a palm-crowded front garden with a pool, and a friendly watchdog, whom I noticed as soon as I pulled up. Surely it wasn’t the same one from years back – he’d have been well over sixteen by now: did labradors live that long? The woman at the desk wasn’t familiar, but she told me the motel was still in the same hands.

You’re from Sydney?

Somehow, up north, people always knew.

Yes, I said. But I lived here once, years ago.

Oh, and are you on holidays now? Visiting relatives?

Something like that.

I checked into my room, threw my bag in the corner and myself on the bed. I lay there for a long time, resting, thinking. Until it became dark enough that I had to get up and turn on the lights.

I found Mitchell upstairs in his bar. He appeared to be interviewing a new pianist. I started to tiptoe out again when I realised what was going on, but he waved to me to stay, and without asking what I wanted, fixed me a drink.

This is Chris. He nodded to the man sitting at the bar. He might be playing here.

Chris held out his hand and shook mine. In profile he revealed a lean tanned face, but as he turned, I glimpsed the other side, a mottled mess of dark birthmark, more raspberry than strawberry, spreading from his nose to his ear and disappearing under his hair, which was black and curly. He continued talking.

I’ll do requests, but there are certain tunes I won’t play.

Fair enough, Mitchell said.

‘You Must Remember This’.

Okay.

‘Candle in the Wind’.

Yep, fine.

And especially ‘Piano Man’. Come to think of it, nothing by Billy Joel. Not a note. Or I walk out that door right there and never come back.

Sure. Okay.

I glanced at Mitchell, who was sounding oddly acquiescent, though he didn’t look it. He looked, with his sleeves rolled to the elbows, polishing wineglasses which he periodically held up to the light for exaggerated inspection, like a man with more important matters on his mind than what a temperamental pianist might condescend to play.

Chris seemed to relax. He paused, took a sip of his drink, then added,

Beyond that, I’ll play just about anything. Swing, jazz, honky tonk, country, blues, you name it. Bach, Liberace, Mrs Mills, anyone you like.

Mitchell stopped polishing to ask, Trucking songs?

Sure, why not? I’ll work any nights you like, within reason of course. Might want the occasional night off for Christmas or something. But no days.

I don’t open much before four or five anyway, Mitchell said. Except for functions.

Yeah, well, that’s the other thing. No weddings, no engagements, no twenty-firsts, you know? I can’t stand those crowds. They expect you to know every tune on the planet and get the shits when you won’t play those Burt Bacharach numbers for hours at a time.

Mitchell shrugged and said, They usually bring their own sound. What about funerals, though? I get the occasional one. Usually small crowds. Except the Irish and Islander funerals tend to go on for a while.

Now, funerals I can do. Chopin, no problem. Drunken Irish songs, ‘Danny Boy’, that’s all fine by me. I love funerals. Chris rose, glancing at his watch. He eased into his jacket then held out his hand to Mitchell.

Tomorrow night, see you about…Mitchell began.

Around seven. Might manage it by then. Chris said goodbye to me and departed.

I raised my drink while gazing at Mitchell. A direct or indirect question to him was a certain way to complete and eternal ignorance. The only way people could find anything out was by waiting, listening, watching. Unfortunately, Mitchell being such a generous host, that also meant hours spent drinking many drinks, all of them pretty potent. I could sit on one of his margaritas for an hour now and then, but I couldn’t sustain the pace over the length of a night. If he noticed you drinking too slowly he simply reached out for the remains of your drink, tossed it into the sink, and made you something different and more solvent. A pineapple daiquiri, three times the normal strength. The only advantage was that these sessions had the effect of making your tongue numb but his loose, as if he was the one drinking, though I never saw him with anything other than a bitter lemon. So you got to hear information about all sorts of people, in and out of town. Fascinating, if you could remember any of it the next day.

It was a quiet evening, only half a dozen patrons clustered at a few tables over by the windows. On the bar a canary fluted sleepily in his cage. Behind Mitchell, on the back wall, the row of mirrors reflected the semi-precious gem colours of the exotic and rarely dispensed liqueurs and mixers – crème de menthe, grenadine, Galliano – while behind me on the open windows the gauzy curtains waved in the warm breeze, sucking and billowing out to embrace the potted palms then gently and noiselessly dropping again.

At times like this I could understand what had kept generations of men seated at bars sipping beers with only the drone of a television in the background. It was a sanctuary, where nothing was required of you, nothing asked. An enclosed and protective place that was also a public space with company and conversation should you require it. A place that made few demands, allowed a person to float without care or deadline, timetable or commitment. And drove their women mad with frustration.

I remained quiet, briefly catching Mitchell’s eye in the bar mirror as he turned to the shelf to stack glasses or smooth out towels. Then, after he served a beer to someone, I spoke.

So, what’s Chris’s story, where’s he from?

But Mitchell reached down to one of the fridges, then slowly stood up again before asking,

What brings you back after all these years?

He asked it in a way that implied he wasn’t interested in the answer, didn’t need an answer. He knew why I was back.

Have you been to the caravan? he continued.

Not yet. Going there tomorrow, I said.

About time, don’t you think?

I know that.

His curls had greyed beneath the Greek fisherman’s cap, and the lines in his face were deeper, but I still would have known him in an instant, anywhere.

Apart from sending on those boxes of yours, I haven’t known what to do about the place for bloody years. By the way, he added, you look like shit.

I know, I said. Bilateral mastectomy tends to do that to you. Especially followed up by secondaries. Liver. Tumours. The works, really. I’m just in the queue now for the upsized deal, the mega meal. You know, the one you can never finish eating.

Mitchell finally registered surprise. He put down the glass he was polishing, tossed aside the towel.

Oh, Delia. I always knew you’d return. Not with that, though.

Who would?

He gazed at me for a few moments, as if drawing out all the years in between.

And you’ve still never found Sonny’s father, I suppose?

No, never.

I became entranced by Van the night I first met him. He was playing guitar in a three-man band, singing and entertaining the small gathering with extemporised anecdotes and jokes. It was just an undergraduate trio – on reflection more audacious than sophisticated, making up in energy what it lacked in polish – but then, I was sixteen and suburban. He was twenty-two, and so much more charming and confident than the teenage boys I knew, who functioned via grunts and jerky movements, and who, if you went out with them, thought it was generous to buy you a bottle of Island Cooler then ignore you for the rest of the night.

It was a café and bar, where I shouldn’t have been, but I’d escaped from an evening football match that my school’s team was playing at the university grounds, and wandered up to Newtown. The venue was a dark place, with lava lamps on the bar and candles on the tables. I listened to the music for a set then ventured to the bar. I was ordering a glass of wine and handing over a dollar to the barman, who looked stoned, when someone whispered into my ear from behind,

Are you sure you’re eighteen?

I turned to see the guitarist. Up close he was all silky locks and neat beard: his eyes seemed to burn brighter among the dark blond hair. My first thought was that he looked like Jesus Christ, my second thought was how stupid that was, since no one knew how Jesus looked.

Of course, I lied.

I was delighted at the attention. He followed me back to my table with a drink and sat down uninvited while a thrill travelled through me. He introduced himself.

Van, I said. That’s an unusual name.

Oh, I changed it.

Changed it? Could one change one’s own name? Awesome.

My parents called me Ivan, so I just changed it to Van a few years ago. After Van Morrison. It reflects my personality more, you know.

Oh. Yeah, I said, pretending to know who Van Morrison was.

What are you drinking? he asked, although it was obvious.

Moselle. I took a sip. It was too sweet, but Jean drank Lindemans Ben Ean at home and it was all I could think of to order.

Old ladies’ drink, he said. You should try some of this.

He was drinking Jack Daniel’s and Coke. I watched him as he chatted, envious and far too admiring to notice that he talked only about himself. When he told me that he was a music student but had been dragging out his degree for several years, that he found the lecturers conservative and boring, the work a complete pain, and the program designed to stifle real talent, and when he confided that playing his own style of music was so much more creatively fulfilling, I couldn’t have agreed more.

I returned the next Friday night, and afterwards we went back to the terrace house he shared near the university. I didn’t go home for the rest of the weekend. Jean was furious.

Van’s mystique only deepened. He laughed at her job as a hairdresser, my vague ideas about becoming a teacher or librarian when I left school. His parents were circus performers, living up north in a town that had a personality of its own, a town that was famous for its circus. That sounded exotic to me, but he insisted that the place was just another small town. And he felt confined by the circus: he was a musician and singer, not a novelty performer. He’d left when he was sixteen.

My dull sense of inferiority, of having missed out – on something, I wasn’t sure what – only sharpened. I began to spend more time with him. I was too keen to be his girl. Too eager to embrace his creatively fulfilling world.

It took me years to understand that it had all been veils and mirrors, the stuff of tinsel and papier-mâché and smoke machines. What he’d come from, a circus background. What he did, pretending to be an artist of the calibre of Van Morrison. Illusions that were necessary for performing, dangerous in real life.

In Amethyst, his home town, nothing was imaginary. Young motherhood was palpable, at times painfully real. From time to time I’d thought about moving south, back to the inner city, where it was common for children to have no fathers, no mothers, serial fathers or even two mothers. Or back to the suburbs, to be near my mother. But although I had written to Jean to let her know where I was, and again after Sonny was born, I made it clear I wanted nothing from her. Jean being right about Van made it harder. As Sonny grew I sent her the occasional photo along with a note. I was independent and capable, and yet so painfully young. The truth was I didn’t know what I wanted from Jean, didn’t feel I owed her any apology, yet knew in my heart she didn’t owe me one either. She and Van had met rarely, as he hated coming to my place, and the first time I invited her to the bar to see him perform she left early and refused to come again. She hated his recreational drug use, his vague ambitions, his nocturnal lifestyle, even his diet. She was suspicious of his past, contemptuous of his unconventional family, scathing about his musical talents. At sixteen, seventeen, I embraced everything my mother loathed. I left Sydney and travelled north, towards the town from which Van had come. There had been no fight, no scene, nothing to suggest he was going to leave. And so I didn’t believe it. He would have gone back home to Amethyst. I believed that. I needed to. He was from the circus, and circus stays in the blood, calls you back home. That’s what he’d told me. And it was getting on for winter then. I would go north too, it would be warm there. I would find Van and convince him we were meant to be together and to have this baby. When I arrived I found that the place was stamped with his absence, the circus empty of him and all his family, probably the only circus family ever to leave for good. But after some weeks, after settling into the caravan, I felt like staying. And was unwilling to go back and face my failures, which were several. My friends going on to university without me. Jean being right again, then being too reasonable, to make me feel better for being so wrong. Me being scoured by my own gratitude when she helped me out, as she would. Me being bitten raw by my pride.

Once I’d settled in Amethyst, I discovered I had no real attachment to the city where I’d lived my short life, and I was still ripe for adventure, burning with a thirst for independence that I felt would sustain me wherever I would go, whatever I did. In a few months I would give birth, and I would be the best mother ever. I would more than make up for my baby’s lack of a father. My child would be born there, and it would belong there and if its father never returned at least it would be in its home.

For a long time I was filled with that arrogant confidence of youth, the conviction that you are desired as much as you desire: Van would want me and his child sooner or later, and would find the prospect of coming home irresistible. For years, part of me believed that, though there was not the slightest scrap of evidence for it. Van’s parents had moved further north, and his great-aunt had recently gone to a convalescent hospital by the coast. The only remains of his family in town were underground. All I had were Sonny and a fierce determination to make everything as right as I could.