Читать книгу Smythe's Theory of Everything - Robert Hollingworth - Страница 10

You might wonder why I relate this story. The morning after we gave Milo his burial, I went into his room alone and just stood there with the morning sun shining dimly in. I could still smell the presence of that old man and it wasn’t unpleasant at all. I saw his old enamel mug - it still had water in it. And then a great wave of despond-ency came over me. Maybe it was because of Kitty but for some unknown reason my face was suddenly awash. I remember this well because I found myself kneeling on the floor going through his few possessions and as I picked up one book after another I could not see the titles through my watery vision.

Then I came across a little notebook with a title written in Milo’s hand. I used my palms to clear my eyes and read, The New Theory of Everything. My heart jumped. I snatched it to my chest and took it out into the Office. Kitty was not yet up and I found some comfort holding Milo’s precious diary and thinking about what we’d lost. What could we rely on? Nothing. Nothing except each other.

In the morning light I looked at that spiral bound book, took a breath and carefully opened it. The first page had nothing more than a simple list of supermarket items. I turned the page and found a list of names and birthdates. The third page mentioned a halfway house in Fitzroy and details on how to get there. The next had directions for some other place, and beyond that, pages of simple sums in pounds and pence, daily reminders.

There was no New Theory of Everything.

Did Milo have one? If so, he kept it locked within his old skull and it died with him, along with all the other things the man stood for. What could that theory have been like? That night, when the whole city was quiet and Kitty snuffled beside me, I decided to write it. Why not? Would a certificate of some kind help me understand something that no-one has ever seen? Could I not have an idea as clear and valid as any other person about a subject which is only understood in principle?

Someday. Someday I would write that Theory, when I had time to read up on what other people had said - especially about the origins of things. I would write a detailed and comprehensive new scheme like Milo might have done and I would write it for him - for the three of us - so far, anonymous. A new theory would change all that: people would see us; they’d know we stood for something.

In the meantime, at least we’d given the old man a proper burial. Frankly, I think he had a more fitting end to his days at the old Daco building in 1958 than what we got here at so-called ‘Eden’.

The only consolation here is my little room which I am getting used to. Adequate is the word that comes to mind. A single bed, a white laminated wardrobe with an oval mirror about 60 cm x 30 cm and a heavily bevelled edge, greenish curtains made out of a shiny polyester-type fabric. Wooden floor of hardwood and a little rug about one and a half times as long as it is wide. Walls a kind of beige with a few hooks sticking out, though I have nothing to hang on them. At least I have my 14-inch TV, set up on a shelf over my little hand basin and plugged in where my razor goes.

Christopher has delivered some of my other belong-ings though they are still in the boxes. Don’t want to unpack in case I see a way out of here, but I have noticed there’s Epsom salts leaking out of a carton which I will have to attend to.

So far I’ve only found my traveller’s alarm clock, dictionary, ashtray and calculator - the ‘essentials’. I keep my window open to the courtyard so I can have the occasional smoke. And I’ve put a little side-table under the window. I got one of the other inmates to pinch it from the lounge. He’s one of the few still walking - the walking dead. Any questions, I can always say I had nothing to do with it. Now I’ve got all this time on my hands. Which is why I’m writing about my life with Kitty and the day we put old Milo down the culvert so he could be near the long-dead Aborigines.

You might wonder why we didn’t get caught. Well, of course we did. It so happened that somebody said they’d seen something and then it was only 24 hours before the police cut the lock on the factory door and found us. Believe it or not, they knew we were living there all along.

‘You knew about us?’ I said at the station.

The police officer didn’t even look up; he just kept tapping away with two fingers on the typewriter, slapping those inked letters hard against the official form.

‘You think we don’t have enough to do without worrying about every runaway? It’s only when you muck up that we come down on you.’

I glanced at Kitty. She wasn’t scared. She was just sitting there, quietly defiant. I knew that expression. But in that office environment I suddenly noticed how rough she looked. She had holes in her pants and also in her shoes and shirt, and her once neat haircut was now a jet-black snarl and I felt a little uneasy about letting her go like that. The cop raised his head and stared at her.

‘How old are you?’ he said.

My heart jumped. For the first time I realised that being a certain age could be a problem. It was the first time it came home that society had preconceived ideas about what people should be like according to their age. Kitty saw it to.

‘Eighteen,’ she said. I sat up instantly. In one way she’d read the situation right, but in another I knew we were in real strife if we started that. I just looked at her and said, ‘Tell the truth, Kitty.’

Kit had really sharp features and when she looked hard at you, you felt pierced. Now she turned her ice-blue eyes on me and it triggered something I’d never experienced; my face reddened and my eyes welled. A whole minute passed and then I saw her shoulders slump. ‘Fifteen,’ she said without averting her stare.

‘I’m nearly seventeen,’ I said as though it might help things; raise our collective age.

The cop rolled his eyes.

‘Christ almighty,’ he said. ‘You’re juvenile delinquents. I could have you institutionalised.’

I stared at the floor. We were in his hands now. But at least we told the truth; it was the only way. We’d been through the whole story just like I’ve done now. We’d told him how much we’d come to love old Milo and how we carried him to his grave. And in the end we simply signed off the paperwork and our mother was contacted. They took our photos and as we posed it suddenly occurred to me that our young age had actually worked in our favour.

Late in the day a man from Social Services drove us home. And there was our mother, still with the bed crammed into the little lounge thick with smoke. She said she was worried sick, that she thought we were dead, that she missed us, that things would be much better from now on.

Back in our room we slammed the door and laughed so hard the tears ran down our faces. I think it was just the relief of being away from the police, away from the whole idea of people trying to box us up in some way and throw away the key. Kitty tapped my planets poster on the wall but Haley didn’t come out. The next morning we were gone again.

A person breathes 370,000 cubic metres of air in a lifetime. At sixty-two I have a lot of cubic metres left, though some in here are way over their quota.

A good program on the ABC: Where to next? About the exploration and travel into space. In my view we’ve been getting ready for this for fifty years - we want to construct our own future world. Each day more and more synthetic stuff in our lives, not just the artificial products and plastics but the whole attitude to what we like and what’s best. A lot of people prefer to take a vitamin than eat an orange. A lot of people type an email rather than talk. A lot of people would sooner watch a documentary on TV than go to Africa. Me, I’d rather go to Africa. I still might.

So far 270 planets have been found in our galaxy. There are 50 billion galaxies visible with telescopes. We can therefore estimate that there are at least 100 billion galaxies. Each galaxy has billions of stars, let’s say at least 100 billion, on average. That means the total number of stars vastly exceeds ten thousand billion billion or in proper terms, ten sextillion. If there was only one planet orbiting every one millionth star - not a number of them like our own solar system - there must be a minimum of ten million billion planets. And if just one in a million can support life, there are more than ten billion life-supporting planets. And so far we have seen 270 planets in total. Like an infant knowing the world from the inside of its crib.

At least I’ve had a go at it; I have attempted a Theory of Everything. I’ve kept that stuck up my jumper since the day it was written - apart from the copies that were sent out, so far, to no avail. What’s wrong with the world? Doesn’t anyone want to know how it all came to be, how the universe works?

Still can’t get a handle on how I have ended up in this place. Lisa’s choice of course. Eden Aged Care Facility my arse, ‘house of the dying’ more like it. Before I came here I was quite happy at The Grace. Hardly ever saw the other tenants except on the way to the bathroom. I had a good room onto Very Street and I could always go to the lounge for a quiet drink and a game of pool - one of the few boarding houses to allow a bit of responsible alcohol. And cheaper than here! All very well while you have your health.

The good Matron Collier just stuck her large pro-boscis through my door, no doubt checking to see if I’m smoking. I enjoy the way they just march in. I wonder what she’d say if I came over to her house, walked right into her bedroom to check her socks and undies? I’ve only been here a few weeks but it’s obvious she’s no Mother Theresa. Hates her job, hates the people and runs this camp like the Gestapo. Messages over loud-speaker: Residents may NOT close their doors during daylight hours. Residents caught smoking in their rooms will be evicted. Residents caught washing their clothes in their hand basin will be evicted. They charge six dollars a time to take your clothes to the wash and then they are gone for a week. Never mind if you need a shirt or a clean pair of socks. Can’t afford to buy more on the Invalid Pension.

Invalid: Enfeebled or disabled by illness or injury. Verb, to invalid someone: Remove from active service, send away. Oxford p. 423 (also see invalidate).

A few of the others in here: Dooley the ex-publican. Don’t know his other name. Everyone calls him Dooley and it seems his great claim to fame is that he once owned a pub in Fitzroy. Won’t say which one - or can’t remember. Only lucid about 50 per cent of the time and then the only thing he talks about is his days at the hotel. A bit of a loudmouth, but harmless.

Joe. The closest thing to a skeleton other than death itself. I’m thin but this bloke takes it into a new realm. Walks OK, if painfully slow, but he’s bent double like a gerbera left in a dry vase. All he ever sees is the floral carpet, poor bugger. Must be at least eighty-five or ninety but still gets around. Don’t yet know what’s wrong with him.

Ivan Radish or Radisich? The one who stole my little table for me. He has a way of leaning in so close that you can hear his lips smacking. He wears bottle-neck glasses and I’m of the theory that he thinks he’s further away. Also Clem in a wheelchair, all ears and nose. Speaks in riddles but when he looks at you it’s clear he hears well enough. Look at his eyes and you can tell he’s not like all the other dementia inmates. I’d bet a fortnight’s pension he knows what people are saying. He tries to use his wheezy little voice and what comes out is hard to comprehend. Unfortunately all the carers treat him like the other senile ones, shove him in a corner facing the TV, lock up his wheels and there he stays until supper time.

Collier is the registered nurse. Then there’s Osborne, Stinson and Gillies who aren’t nurses but registered carers, by degrees all sharp and economical. I’m talking about their comments not their care. Can’t get too close to the dying I suppose. And in truth that’s exactly what I’ve got in here, the walking dead waiting for a heart attack, or die in their sleep. Or just fade away like an accidental stain on the carpet.

Just back from lunch - the muster in the dining room. Hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic. First, Joe was sitting in my spot and I asked him to move - only to learn he’d arrived at the table without his hearing aid. I’d have shouted in his ear except I didn’t want to get that close. I’m on a table with five others - some of the more ‘capable’ ones, all men. Keep the men and women separate.

This is lunch: Ivan stealing other people’s bread and also peaches from dessert bowls. Even speared a sausage off Dooley’s plate! Created quite an uproar. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ says Nurse Stinson. ‘You’ll get used to him.’ It was he who stole my little side table for me - now I can see it’s in his blood. The highlight of the meal? Watching old Clem trying to get his fork into a chocolate biscuit. I was just getting over that when an old lady on another table coughed so hard I thought it was the end of her. Then she spat up a slimy gob, caught it in her hand and wiped it on the side of her wheelchair. Looking forward to dinner.

Now I sit by my little window and try to see the logic in the rule that denies me a quiet fag in my room. I open the window and blow the smoke into the courtyard which is exactly where they want me to go in the first place. But for me to push my chair right around to the other side of this same window would take more effort than I can afford. I have a little washbasin in my room and I put the butts down the plughole. A tip: flush each time otherwise they swell up and block the sink.

Kitty and I took off again. We caught the tram out to the last stop in Fawkner with exactly one pound in our pocket, two ten shilling notes. One was given to us by the Social Services man who drove us home - out of his own pocket - and the other came from our mother. She told us to go down to the shop and get some food in the house. We figured we were going to eat the food anyway so why not save the ten bob for when we got hungry? At home we packed a canvas bag, took some coins from a saucer in the kitchen to pay for the tram to the end of the line, and off we went on the road to Sydney.

Out on the highway we waited no more than twenty minutes before we had our first ride. This was 1959 and people would pick you up straight away. They remembered the War years and the Depression and they still thought it was a good idea to give each other a hand. Today it’s the reverse; rather than help you up they use you as a rung on their own ladder.

The trip was uneventful so no use repeating it. Except that we slept on the banks of the Murray River at Wodonga. It was March and hot as hell. There’d been a big bushfire somewhere to the east and you could smell the smoke, a faintly acrid scent that caught in the nostrils and though I’ve never seen a fire it gave me the jitters. We knew nothing of the bush and Kit and I lay side by side as close as we could get. Above us in the total blackness a million stars blinked. It made me think of poor dead Milo and the missing theory. The breeze picked up and the leaves and branches rustled and Kitty said the trees were talking about us. Maybe so - how would I know? Then she said she was feeling frightened again, the way she sometimes did in the dark at the Daco. I told her to sleep; I put my arms around her and reminded her of her magic sleigh, something to take her somewhere else.

When we woke the grass was wet even though it was going to be a hot day. We had a loaf of sliced bread and block of cheddar and we gnawed off bits of cheese and drank some of the river water. No restaurant meal could have tasted better.

Two days later we walked up Aunty Deb’s street in Cronulla. She was our mother’s sister and from what we’d been told, the two hated each other. I knew a lot about Aunty Deb from our mother - all of it bad and punctuated with swears and curses. From that bit of information we could tell she was nothing like Mum so we figured she might be alright. Kit rang the doorbell. We waited quietly and just stared at the mat. Welcome, it said. We knew exactly what we were going to say; we’d had four days to figure it out. We’re sorry to land on you like this but we’re desperate. We left home because we need a fresh start, we want a new life and we want to make something of ourselves. We guessed that’s what she’d want to hear.

No-one came to the door. We walked around the house peering in windows. It was a decent-sized home, at least two bedrooms - and neat; she had to be doing alright. Then we sat on the step and waited. I glanced at Kit and realised it was very timely that we should be looking for a bath and a comb and a bit of ordinary food. She rolled up her jeans and looked at the mass of mosquito bites; some were serious sores. She put a dob of spit on each one to relieve the itch, a trick I’d shown her.

Then around six, a woman pulled up in a large blue convertible American car, got some stuff out of the back and walked towards us. At first I thought it was someone coming to visit, she was so far removed from the look of our mother. She must have been about thirty-five and she had on skin tight pink slacks, a roll-neck sweater and a red leather jacket. Her bright blonde hair was piled up like a movie star.

Her perfume arrived first, and then she got right up the path before she saw us. We both stood up and faced her. She stared for a second and then she said, ‘Gail’s kids.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You’re … Aunty Deb? We’re sorry to land on you like this but …’

‘You look like crap, worse than your picture. I told Gail I couldn’t help.’

‘You … you’ve spoken to our mother?’

‘She sent a letter in ‘56. She sent your class photos as well, as if that might encourage me to take you off her hands. I told her it was time she got on with the job herself. Not a good listener, your mother. So she’s packed you off anyway, eh?’

‘No, we quit,’ I said. ‘We just took off. We got your address out of the phone book. We knew you lived …’

‘Gail doesn’t know where you are?’

I had to think what to say. Would she prefer one answer or another? We were still standing on the veranda and Aunty Deb was still looking up at us. I noted her bright red lips, her sparkly handbag slipping off her shoulder and the shopping bags hanging heavily. I couldn’t get over her piled up bottle-blonde hair.

‘We just took off,’ I said. ‘We didn’t say we were going. We didn’t tell her where we’d go.’

‘We left once before,’ Kit said. ‘In Melbourne. We went into the city so she probably thinks we’ve gone there again.’

I didn’t want Kit to say that. I didn’t want her to say anything. Too much information doesn’t always help your cause. Aunty Deb gave me a shopping bag, walked past us and put her key in the door. I was aware again of her powerful fragrance; God knows what we must have smelled like. Aunty Deb sighed.

‘Well, it’s not like I wasn’t expecting you.’

‘You … you were expecting us?’

‘The Moon arcana. I pulled that card two days running. The second time right next to the Sun. Twos: twos everywhere, and two figures like Adam and Eve reaching out to each other and the twin protective towers right next door.’

Kitty and I must have stared a long time. What could we say? I assumed she was a little touched like so many others of her generation.

‘You better come in and clean up,’ she said. ‘Make you look a bit more like those school photos. And don’t call me Aunty Deb. Debbie will do.’

I have just entered ‘the bad books’. I had a terrible night last night. I awoke to hear noises in the passage, first a low moaning, then a soft wail or crying, and in the light coming under my door I could see a figure walking up and down. It scared the shit out of me - for some reason I got it in my head that it might be one of the long-dead inmates returning to haunt us.

We’re only allowed to shut our doors after bedtime, but locks are banned. So I got up in the dark and found my walking stick. It has a ‘T’ handle on it and I jammed it firmly under the doorhandle. I tried to sleep. The luminous hands on my little traveller’s clock said it was half past two. I distracted myself by closing my eyes for a long while, then opening them to observe the new position of the luminous hands. I tried to concentrate on those hands. Why is luminous paint luminescent? It’s because it’s made with phosphorescent sulphide and when exposed to light it absorbs UV black light and in return, gives off white light.

Eventually I dozed off but somewhere in the very early hours there came a knock, knock, knock and I could hear the doorknob turning. I shit myself again and pulled the pillow round me. Then I thought I heard a voice - it sounded as if my name was being called. I pretended to sleep.

All of a sudden there came an almighty crash and my door burst open, sending my cane flying. I’m pretty sure I yelled. Then the lights came on and there was Nurse Osborne and a male assistant standing over my bed. Osborne looked furious and immediately started into me. ‘What’s the idea of locking your door? We’ve had suicides in here, you know!’

Forget suicide - if only they knew how close I came to a heart attack.

When they left, my stomach turned and I felt like vomiting again. Can’t do it in my hand basin though. Since my gall bladder op I don’t digest food properly and the big bits won’t go down the plug hole.

This morning I am just starting to feel better when in comes Nurse Osborne again. At least I was dressed and I was sitting on the bed reading through my notes.

‘What was that all about?’ she demands. What can you say to that?

‘I was sleeping, the situation only escalated when …’

‘We don’t have situations around here, Mr Smythe - at least not on my shift. You’ll learn to behave like everyone else - there are no exceptions. And on my shift you’re my responsibility.’

I put away my writings. Osborne stands there un-blinking, hands on hips. She sighs dramatically.

‘Unfortunately I’m going to have to submit a report.’

Suddenly I see a way to get on her better side.

‘You don’t need to,’ I say. ‘I’m sure I’ll get over it and I can see no good reason to put yourself on report.’

Her mouth falls open.

‘Not me!’ she yells. ‘I’m reporting you and your ob-structive behaviour!’ She stares hard, then huffs and stomps out. No point arguing. But the upshot is that now I have a serious blot against my good name, and all because of a ghost in the passageway.

Debbie was a ‘rocker’; she told us so herself. We used to sit in her lounge and she’d play all the new songs on a little turntable. She had a big stack of singles - 45s they were called. On the first day I told her we’d heard Bill Haley and the Comets on the wireless.

‘You heard of Elvis Presley?’ she said.

‘Course,’ we chimed. ‘We like him, don’t we Kitty?’

‘Yeah he’s great,’ Kitty said.

‘What about Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard?’

‘They’re great,’ I said.

‘Pat Boone?’

‘Yeah, we like him too.’

‘Pat Boone? He’s crap. Booney swoonie. That awful crap is in the past! That’s exactly the kind of crap we want to get away from.’

‘Oh yeah, sorry,’ I said. ‘I thought you meant someone else.’

Debbie was always saying crap. I think it might have been a new word then. Today it’s bullshit.

That aunt of ours was a dynamo, taught us all the music, how to rock ‘n’ roll, how to cook, how to swear. She called a spade a spade, cut through all the nonsense and just got on with the essentials in life. She worked as a tax accountant’s secretary over in Oyster Bay, a job she hated like the living Jesus. ‘It’s a crap job in a crap shop,’ she said. I went there with her once and she was right. I couldn’t imagine anything worse. The office used to be a corner milkbar, stuck on the end of a line of old shops, glass-fronted with brown-coloured venetians down and closed in the window. She said the accountant was hardly ever there so three days a week she used to sit in that little room on her own, doing the books and answering the phone.

‘At least it pays the bills,’ she said, ‘and Alex doesn’t mind me doing my readings at the office - in my own time of course.’

Debbie’s big thing, her preoccupation, the main thrust of her life, revolved around her devotion to the Tarot. Nothing - absolutely nothing - ever got done without first consulting the cards. The day we arrived we’d hardly put the groceries down before Debbie took out the cards and laid them on a square of black cloth edged with embroidered stars. She needed to know what to do with us, she said, and I watched with fascination as she pored over each pulled arcana, our future hanging on the order in which they appeared. Her nimble fingers flicked them out; her long painted nails tapped them flat. She had jewels on several fingers set in gold and I noted the scattered freckles on her long-boned hands. As she pulled the cards I watched her brow furrow then brighten, only to crease again. Her mouth was set and she breathed low throaty sounds; some seemed positive, others less so.

Finally she said, ‘Nothing too surprising here - but I don’t like this one.’ She pointed a pink nail at a card with an angel on it draped in blue and red. I saw a name but it was upside down.

‘Wrong position,’ she said. ‘But I suppose we can’t expect everything.’

And so she let us stay.

‘I only have the one spare room though.’

‘That’s OK,’ we said. ‘We’ve shared the same room since we were born. We prefer it that way.’

I don’t think Debbie particularly liked the arrangement but there was no choice. At first we just lived there free of charge. Well, sort of. We were put to work almost immediately: the garden, the cleaning, repair work, even did some painting and put new flywire on the doors and windows. We actually liked it. We had something to do and as long as we could do it together and then rock ‘n’ roll in the lounge at night it was all OK by us. I think we must have played Blue Suede Shoes a thousand times.

In March Debbie took us to see Love Me Tender and from that day we were Elvis fans. I greased my hair and slicked it back with a ducktail in the front. It wasn’t even 1960 yet at that time, for the average person, life was as ordinary as a brown paper bag and most adults were as straight as the Queen’s flagpole. Women wore short perms and tidy skirts that covered their knees, men wore cardigans, ties and hats. The most original thing for a man was a pink check shirt worn on the outside of his pleated trousers. But me and Kitty and Aunty Deb wore white skin-tight ‘dacks’ and thought of ourselves as right out there on the edge of a brand new scene.

One morning Debbie spread her cards as usual - always before leaving the house - and I saw her body jerk as though she’d been stabbed.

‘I knew it,’ she murmured, ‘I just knew it.’

‘What is it, Deb?’ Kitty asked. Kit had become fascinated with Deb’s devotion to Tarot ever since the day she tried to pick up the pack herself. That day Deb screamed.

‘Don’t touch them! You do not touch my Tarot! Those cards have never experienced any other energy since the day they were made.’ She gasped as though choking and quickly closed the doors of the cabinet. ‘They’ve been magnetised, Kitty, you understand? With my persona. If you touch them you’ll mix in your own energy vibrations’ - a crime it seemed, that might cause a blood-flow from the ears. Kitty was aghast and from that day on made a wide berth around the cupboard that housed Debbie’s persona.

But this day our aunt had seen something in the reading that had alarmed her far more than usual. Kitty and I drew closer.

‘What … what is it Deb?’ I ventured.

‘The Judgment,’ she said. ‘And look where it is!’

We tried to appreciate the precarious position of the card, lying flatly among the others. A card next to it was called The Fool and The Hanged Man lurked nearby.

‘Is someone going to die?’ I said.

‘Of course they are!’ She looked at both of us. ‘Not literally, but I tell you now, I might as well be dead.’

‘Maybe it means someone else,’ Kitty volunteered.

‘Oh, if only. If only that were true!’ She slumped in the chair. ‘I’ll just have to weather it. I’ve got to ride it out.’

That night she came home dark and brooding. We knew that the week before she’d broken up with her boy-friend and no doubt the Tarot reflected some of that, but this was something else.

‘A man came to read the water meter today,’ I said casually, ‘but he couldn’t find the meter.’

Debbie just looked at me as if I’d struck her.

‘Do you intend to bludge around here your whole fucking life? … Do you? Because if that’s the plan I want you to go back to Victoria!’

We stared at her. The Reading: was the death impending?

‘I thought you liked us doing things around here and …’

‘I’m not here to look after you, Jack. I’m not your mother!’

‘Course not. You’re nothing like our mother,’ I said.

‘That’s not the point. I don’t want to … I’m not … why don’t the pair of you just go and get a fucking job!’

She stormed out to the kitchen. I looked at Kitty. I tried to absorb her words. A job? Yeah, why not? Why not get a job? We could earn our own money. We went into the kitchen. There was Deb holding the fridge door open and she was sobbing like a child.

‘OK,’ I said, ‘I get it, I’m sorry.’

‘Oh Jack, it’s not you, it’s me,’ she said. ‘Those crap cards this morning showed just where I am in life. Look at me, thirty-seven in a dead end job and turning into an old maid. Mutton dressed as lamb. I don’t mind being your mother, God knows I’ll never be a real one.’

What could I say: Yes you will or, it doesn’t matter?

I said, ‘Maybe the cards will … Maybe the Tarot … You know, if you tried again …’ But I wasn’t sure what to add and Debbie wasn’t listening.

As usual, Kitty jumped right in; she knew exactly what to do. She just went over and put her arms around her. I just stood there and with nothing to offer I had the disturbing feeling that somehow I was the root of the problem. Why didn’t I do something? But what? Suddenly I was five years old and I heard my father saying, No intestinal fortitude son, that’s your problem: no intestinal fortitude. I was in my teens before I finally learned what those words meant. A teacher at school used the phrase on the class. ‘In other words,’ he shouted, ‘you all lack guts!’ The rev-elation hit me like a time-bomb. Immediately I joined the football team. My father was wrong and I knew it.

But I only played about three games. One Saturday on a cold muddy field I found myself on the mark of a boy who was lining up for a goal. Somehow I’d given away a free kick. I jumped and waved my skinny arms and the ball slid off the boy’s boot and hit me square in the face. Blood streamed but at least I stopped that goal. Where was my father then!

The day after Debbie cried, Kitty was walking the streets, asking about work in every restaurant and cafe in the neighbourhood - she’d turned sixteen by then and I’d be eighteen in October. Kitty made little leaflets and stuck them up: Able and willing girl to do any kind of job. Good worker. I never knew she had it in her. In no time she had a job in an Indian restaurant. That left me.

Just back from ‘church service’ in the common room. I had no intention of going but at the last minute, in came Nurse Stinson to round up the ones who were sitting it out. She’s a size, that Nurse Stinson. If she sat on the likes of me it would be the end of it - you could fold me up like a newspaper. It’s not healthy all that weight, her heart would be no bigger than mine but dealing with a 50 per cent higher workload, 40 per cent at least.

‘Come on Mr Smythe,’ she says. ‘Join the group.’

‘I’m not religious,’ I tell her. ‘And I have no intention singing holy praises to some imaginary bloke in the sky.’

‘Come on, hurry up,’ she says again, as though I haven’t spoken. ‘Come join the others.’

I go, more out of curiosity than anything else, and to give my skills with the wheelchair a bit of practice. I do not want to use the frame, and certainly not my unaided legs. It’s the same wheelchair that Lisa hired after the gall bladder op. When the hire term ran out they offered the chair for sale as a second-hand item so I got a good deal. Not that I intend using it much longer. One look at the other chair-bound inmates and you can see the curtains are drawn on what might have been a very interesting life. I’m not saying my life is interesting or even worth preserving, but once they get you permanently in the chair you’re theirs for keeps. Shove you all up against one another in the common room, lock up your wheels and leave you parked for the duration. You are easy to manage then, controlled in the same way that the furniture and flowers are. All neat and organised.

I parked near the back for the ‘Church Service’ and, as I was forced to be a part of it, I thought I might as well use it as an opportunity to learn something. There had to be something there to do. And sure enough, 112 greeting cards strung along the left wall, all made by the inmates. Three rows, containing thirty-six, thirty-two and forty-four cards, though the row of forty-four did not look any more crowded than the others. Predominant colour used was red and easily outclassed the second main colour, a royal blue. That could mean several things. 1. Red catches the eye first. 2. Choosing red requires the least amount of imagination. 3. There is more red paint and paper available. 4. The craft nurse directs the senile to red paint and paper. I’m favouring 2.

The attendees: nineteen women in total, seven men, eleven wheelchairs. Of the nineteen women about four seem very lucid, another four reasonably so, the rest far away in the land of the oblivious. Dooley was there, poised to bellow out whatever hymn they selected. Old Clem in the chair was staring straight at me. What was he looking at? I’m sure he knows something. Treated like he’s gone just like the others but I don’t believe it. Nothing I can do about it. Also ‘Skeleton Joe’ staring at his lap. Couldn’t look at the ceiling if you said there was a nude picture up there of Jacqueline Bisset. Two new men I haven’t seen. One is a young fellow probably in his early forties stretched out in a bed-cum-chair arrangement. He has some serious intellectual disability, unable to control his movements and a loud but incoherent voice. Nurse stuck him in the front where he couldn’t see anyone else - as far as he knew he might have been the only one in the room. The other new bloke is ancient but he seems to have his marbles. In a wheelchair but sitting very upright and alert and taking as little interest in the proceedings as I was.

Sat through What a friend we have in Jesus and other equally absurd rubbish, Dooley booming like a foghorn with not an ounce of decency. Apparently in an uncommon gesture, we were blessed by the presence of a Church of England Minister which all the carers seem to feel is a great honour. Should have heard the man rave - I looked around thinking that perhaps God was sitting with us in the audience. The word unctuous suddenly came to mind. Later I checked on my remembered use of the word and I was right. As per Oxford Dictionary p. 936 - Full of ‘unction’ i.e. affected gush or enthusiasm. Glad to be back in my room where I can have a quiet smoke and get on with my story.

One hot day I was wandering down Arthurton Street thinking of nothing in particular when I saw an old man painting signs on a shop window. He was standing on a wooden stool close to the pane. He wore dark sunglasses beneath a battered peaked cap from which bushy white sideboards extended to well below his earlobes. His white overalls were streaked with different colours and his paint-spattered boots had long lost their shine. His old hands held a pot of paint, a long knobbed stick and a brush and all three were in motion as he flowed on the white paint.

I stood and watched the big cursive sweeps and I was transfixed - it was all freehand but it had a sense of precision that I knew could easily be calculated. I must have stood there a full ten minutes and the old man eventually stepped back from the stool and lit a smoke. I saw him glance at me but he never said a word. He had parallel lines marked right across the two windows of the shopfront and now he stepped forward and sketched ‘Manchester’ very roughly between them, sat down and started painting the letters. That’s when I stepped up.

‘It won’t fit,’ I said.

He looked at me through his dark lenses and then continued painting.

‘There’s not enough room on the glass.’

‘You must be an expert,’ he said, gruffly. Flies buzzed around our heads and I wanted to stand in the shade.

‘Not really, but unless you’re going to start using smaller letters, it won’t fit in.’

But he was not going to get up and check; there was no chance he would let that young, skinny eighteen-year-old with the Elvis hairstyle tell him how to write a sign. That was the year The Beatles came to Australia, their one and only visit, but I was a rocker and as Deb and I both knew, this new fad wouldn’t last.

The old bloke just kept right on going with his sign until he got to ‘S’ and it was then that my prediction was roundly confirmed. He got around it by doing a ‘T’ apostrophe ‘R’ - that is MANCHEST’R. He looked at me through his plastic paint-specked sunglasses.

‘Don’t have a bad eye, kid. You should put that to something useful.’

I didn’t think there was anything in it at all.

‘I didn’t use my eye,’ I said, ‘I just calculated it.’

‘How’s that work?’

‘Letters are 9 inches wide plus the gap between averages out to 9 inches because some letters are a bit narrower, which equals 90 inches or 7‘6” long. Two windows four feet each, allow a bit each side and also allow for the frame in the middle equals less than 7 actual running feet for the wording.’

He just stared at me though I couldn’t see his eyes.

‘Help me put this stuff in the truck,’ he said.

We put his plank and ladders on the roof rack and then he gave me a lift back to Cronulla. His name was Jeff Burgess and in that truck he gave me a smoke. Up until then I’d only had about three in my life; couldn’t afford it. He told me he was going to see the year out and then he’d retire. At the lights he put the truck out of gear and looked at me. ‘Want a job?’

‘I’m in the market,’ I said.

‘Dirty work, this signing business. Not all flicking paint on shiny windows.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘What if I asked you to sand down five real estate boards and prime ‘em up again, three coats, wash out all the brushes, rollers, trays, clean out the shed, then sand down another five boards before knockoff ?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Can’t say what I think until I give it a go. Painted my Aunty’s picket fence, though, two coats.’

In a month he had me signed up to do a ticket-writing course and a painters’ night class. Without even realising it I’d been conscripted to signwriting - which was a whole lot better than being conscripted to the National Service, which started right about then. I managed to miss it on account of the day on which I was born. Random. Chance. Two key factors in my theory of the universe.

Yet I never made a great signwriter, nothing like Jeff. But there’s more to working on signs than just the writing. Quoting was one of my specialties. Jeff would send me down to some new supermarket or other and I’d measure up, calculate the gear needed and the time it would take, work out our hourly charge. Then all Jeff had to do was show up with gear. I’d help set it up, organise the prep work, strike the chalk-lines, do the fill-ins, the second coating, buy the smokes, vanilla slices and coffee and pack up at the end. Do it standing on my ear.

And those were the days when signwriting was really something. Everyone needed it. No inkjet printing or mass production stuff back then. Jeff didn’t quit at the end of the year like he said. And our very good rock ‘n roll Aunty Deb kept us both on at Reed Street. I’d never seen Kitty so happy and her troubled toss-and-turn nights seemed to fade as her confidence grew. Things were going so well we even sent a postcard home to our mother.

Random: Done haphazardly, without aim, purpose or principle. Oxford p. 677.

Chance: Absence of design or discoverable cause. Oxford p. 128.

This morning the new inmate I saw at our ‘praise the Lord’ meeting was being moved in right across the corridor from me. Jim Southall. Dell Williams said he is an ex-parliamentarian. Very old and decrepit. When they were getting him out of the chair I saw the horrible scabs on his neck and cheek. Odd smell about him too. The smell of death? Hope he’s not going to be another zombie sleep walker.

Two nights ago I’m lying in bed when I open my eyes to see what I thought was an apparition in my room. I snap to a sitting position, my heart knocking buttons off my pyjamas. And lo and behold, it’s one of the old ducks out for a walk in her nightie! I had to get up and ease her back into the passageway. I closed the door and put my foot against it. It might sound harsh but it’s not my responsibility to take care of these poor old souls.

I have no intention of ‘engaging with others’, as Nurse Lohman puts it. I have nothing in common with these destitute people left helpless by old age. Most would have died if it wasn’t for the drugs. ‘Socialising’ in here is a little like life at the office - even though you have dozens of co-workers it doesn’t mean you have to like them. Anyway, I do not intend staying any longer than necessary.

At dinner tonight I was put next to Jim the ex-parliamentarian, or at least that’s where I parked myself as it was the only spot left by the time I got there. As it is customary, I said hello to him and would have been pleased to leave it at that.

‘Neighbours,’ he says.

‘What?’

‘Neighbours, we live across the road.’ He meant he now has a room opposite mine.

‘Traffic’s bad up our street, don’t you think?’ he says.

‘Traffic?’

‘Yes, as thick as Bourke Street. Horns blasting, bumps and clatters and clangs. The thump of Jean’s footfalls enough to shake you out of your bed.’

‘Who’s Jean?’

‘Jean Stinson.’ He looks around the room. ‘The big one,’ he whispers. ‘The two-ton truck.’

Then big bumbling Dooley on my left leans in. ‘You goin’ t’ eat that chop?’

‘Course I am and if I wasn’t I’d leave it on my plate.’

‘A waste. When I had the pub, anything come back to the kitchen would end up in someone’s guts. We knew the value of things in those days. A chop is a prize for some.’

‘Well, why don’t I let it go back to the kitchen then, eh?’

‘What’s your name?’ he says.

‘I told you last night,’ I say patiently. I can be very patient when needed.

‘What is it then?’ says Dooley.

‘You’ll think of it,’ I tell him. ‘It’ll come to you.’

Sad old Clem looks over at Dooley, his serviette tucked into his collar. ‘What’s the thing you lift up your car with?’

Dooley looks at him. ‘Never had no need for a car. Had a Triumph Trident once but when I got the pub I sold that as well. What’s wrong with public transport? Buses, trains, taxis …’

‘He’s trying to tell you that my name’s Jack, Mack. Got it? J. A. C. K.’

‘Jack Black from down the track, had a whip that he could crack,’ he booms with the look of a buffoon. Fucking idiot.

Then Ivan on the end takes out his top teeth and licks the food off them. I’m ready to throw up. I look at Jim Southall and he gives an odd grin. The poor old bugger must have resigned to accept all this. He’s given in to the indignities and unnatural assaults on the sensibilities. He no longer expects normality. I do. I’m not eighty-five, I’m sixty-two! I’ve got quarter of a century before I end up like decrepit old MP Jim Southall with scabs on his face and water leaking out of his red, saggy eyelids.

Then comes the ultimate insult. Big booming Dooley is going on about the day counter meals were 2/6 and pies were a shilling, waving his arms about like a gorilla and he knocks my arm, jolting a full cup of hot tea in my lap! I had just started to sip and it’s all over me - every drop of it down the front of my shirt and trousers. So now I’m in my room, but instead of watching Lost on TV, my favourite show, I’m spending the hour at the hand basin washing out my shirt and underpants.