Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories (22 page)

‘My brother. High school book. He bring home for me do his homework. He no like even little bit. I love. Love best poem, “Honey Breath”.'

He knows the words, this keeper of all knowledge. He speaks them slowly, his expression altering, a sadness creeping into his round moon face, and when he is done, the silence grows long.

‘If I had started earlier with you, perhaps. But it's too late now. That is the story of my life, Burton. I have always been just a little too late. Headmaster of a two roomed school in a one horse town. Headmaster with a drinking problem.' He sips from his tea cup to prove he speaks no lie.

‘I hate this town, Burton. I landed here in 1958 with my wife and a son. I despise this town, its dust, its flies, but mainly its people, and I can never leave. My wife and son are buried here. I can never leave them. When they put me out to pasture, I have no place to go, Burton. My doctor tells me that alcohol kills, and I say, ah, but slowly, too slowly.

‘It's a flytrap, this town. One of those filthy, sticky, pink things we used to hang from the ceilings. I hung one in my kitchen. A fascinating thing, it appeared quite harmless when I put it up, but as the months passed it built up a covering of flies and dust. Then one day I looked up at it and saw myself dangling there, stuck fast, and no longer even struggling. The interesting thing about it, Burton, it was no longer sticky, yet so hard to break away from.'

He removes his glasses, places them on the table. I see his eyes, free of their magnification. Blue, a misty blue like an autumn sky when it knows a long cold winter is coming.

‘I understand,' I sign. ‘Like you in trap. You think, oh yes, better old devil I know, new devil sometimes worse. Maybe not worse, that new devil.'

‘Perhaps you are right.' He rubs his eyes with fingertips before replacing his spectacles. ‘Off you go, child. Take this with you.'

From his table he picks up a small blue dictionary, offers it to me as I stand and replace my cardigan. I am slow to move towards him.

‘It was my boy's. It still has his name on it.' He opens the book and with a fat finger touches the script on the flyleaf. ‘Tell me, Burton, is it fair that encephalitis should steal into this town and pass by the Aborigines' camp, skip over the Wests with their uncountable hoards, then take my boy?'

He fondles the book for a moment more then tosses it to me. My hands are sure. They catch and hold this precious gift.

‘Perhaps there is a good lesson to be learned there, Burton. Man must never place all of his eggs in one basket.'

I am familiar with egg baskets. The book tucked beneath my arm, I sign: ‘People say two baskets carry more eggs, make better balance, but sometimes people fall with two baskets, break many eggs. Make big, big trouble.' My hand unconsciously traces the shape of the bruised cross on my arm. Quickly I snatch the treacherous thing back. Quickly I make it sign again: ‘Thank you for book. I wish I got very big word for say thank you. Not say what heart feel. I will treasure your boy book forever.'

‘Forever is a long, long time, Burton.'

‘Yes, forever. Sorry for messy write. Sorry for . . . everything.' Signing I back away, the book clasped to my breast.'

‘Good afternoon, Burton.'

I run to the grocer. He has swapped the eggs in my basket for tea and sugar. He hands me a brown paper bag filled with broken biscuits.

‘For you.' He points to the bag and to me. ‘For you. For Annie.'

Two gifts for Annie?

I dawdle the long two miles home eating broken biscuits and reading from my book.

The voices carry across the foggy landscape. Many children come to play in the park next door. Polly, approaching fifty, has the build of a twelve year old, and the innocence. She never wed. Each day she spends hours watching the children in the park, throwing balls back when they fly over her fence. She knows many of them by sight, though she doesn't recognise the two on the seesaw, androgynous beings in jeans and sweatshirts.

‘Dressed like that on such a day? What are their mothers thinking of?' she comments to the still figure in the bed. He makes no reply. She adjusts her spectacles low on her nose, then her fingers fly.

She is knitting a complicated garment of many blues for her grandniece, her brother Herb's granddaughter. She has seven nieces and ten nephews, but only one special grandniece, named for her . . . well, almost named for her: little Pollyanna. Herb, the proud grandfather, keeps Polly supplied with photographs.

‘Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven. Medium blue, knit five. Dark blue, knit one. Medium blue, knit five. Light blue, knit two.'

A wool fibre tickles her nostril. Hands occupied, her nostrils flare. ‘Ut . . . ut . . . tweue.' Stifled, controlled, her sneeze is barely enough to impel the stray fibre on its way. ‘Thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty.' She continues her stitch count to the click-clicking rhythm of her needles. A knitting machine, Polly Flinders, her hands are never still. She can knit a small sweater in a day, but not this one. This one is special.

A strange morning, eerie, the old house enveloped in fog. She feels cut off from the world this morning, and she has a long morning to fill with only that old man for company.

It's his birthday today. He is ninety-eight and has outlived four of his children, though he's bedridden now and has been for three years. She knitted him a woolly beanie for his birthday. The district nurse told her that a lot of warmth is lost through the head. She gave it to him before feeding him his birthday breakfast. It looks so bright and colourful against his white pillows.

Click-click, click-click. Blue stitches fly from the left needle to the right. Then the right needle is full and the right becomes the left. Her elbow lifting, she eases wool from the light blue ball, winds a little slack back onto the dark blue, begins another row while watching the two children at play.

They stand on the seesaw's narrow board, joint wills keeping a precarious balance – and they've been at it for at least an hour.

‘Stop cribbing, Luce. You have to keep one foot back behind the line.'

‘It slipped. It was a stupid idea anyway. I wanted to toss a coin.'

‘It was my turn to choose and I chose the seesaw. Get off if you don't like it.'

‘Like hell I will.'

A smile creeps across Polly's features. ‘Children never change, do they? With all of the computers and mobile phones and things, they still like seesaws. Listen to them, Father.' She waits for a sign that he's heard her. Perhaps he's sleeping with his eyes open. ‘Herb will be over at twelve. He's having lunch with us. I've made your favourite soup and a sponge cake. You like my sponge cake, don't you, dear?'

The old man is propped high on pillows. His mud eyes see her but do not acknowledge her. A crumbling puppet-master, unwilling yet to release his hold on the family strings, he tugs on them now with the fragile power of age and infirmity.

‘Get me water.' His voice is no longer the voice of a man. A toothless jackal, he yelps, whines his order, his morning breath fetid as a scavenger dog's. Polly turns her head to escape it. The room stinks of him and his slow decay.

‘In one moment, Father. I'll finish this row. Knit three, light blue, knit two.' Each morning she sits by his bed after the district nurse has gone, her fine metal needles click-clicking as she counts away the days of her life, always knitting for children from another's womb.

She had loved, long ago, had thought to wed, but she'd put away her dreams when her brother Arthur died – died outside the hospital on the day her father had his first stroke. Dear Arthur, he'd been too young to go. Her father was unable to manage alone when he was released from hospital, so she'd moved home to look after him, just for a while – fifteen years ago. And it hadn't been all bad. The house was handy to a shopping centre and she enjoyed shopping. And she had her garden, loved spending fine days in the garden. Not this month though. June had come in bitterly cold and grown even colder.

‘There is such a fog out there today, dear, but we're nice and cosy in here, aren't we?' A three bar electric heater glows warmly from the corner. She can't justify having two heaters burning, which is why she brings her knitting into this room.

He whines again. He wants his water.

‘This is one of the more difficult rows of the pattern, dear. I can't put it down midway through or I'll lose my count. Let me finish this row then I'll get you a drink. Knit four, dark blue, knit one – it's quite a complicated pattern –'

But the old coot is tired of waiting. He snatches at her knitting, tangling the wool around the bruised blue bunch of sinews that is his hand. Her blue stitches slide from the needle.

‘Oh, Father! Oh, look what you've done! It's for little Pollyanna.'

‘Little Pollyanna,' he yips. ‘What about me?'

She is his last born, her mother's daughter, and like her mother, timid, dutiful, obedient, compassionately tolerant of all. Never misses church on Sundays. All anger is repressed, all personal need buried beneath good works and godly thoughts, aware her reward will be in heaven, but her cheeks glow red and her eyes fill, spill. Blindly she gathers the wool and places it out of his reach before pouring water from the jug beside his bed. She lifts his head from the pillow and holds the glass while he gurgles a mouthful. It trickles down his chin while her own warm tears trickle down to compressed lips. She never weeps, or not in this room. A towel, kept handy for small emergencies, snatched, she wipes his chin, dabs at his throat and pyjama top.

‘Is that better, dear?'

Honour thy mother and thy father, the bible says. Her mother died young, took to her bed one day and never got out; gave up, gave in. Her father now receives a double dose of Polly's honour. And he doesn't deserve it. He is not honourable. His eyes are malevolent pits. She knows he doesn't want that water, but she offers it again. It barely wets his lips before he slaps at her hand, spilling water onto his pillow and sheet, knocking the glass to the floor.

‘Look what you've done, you clumsy bitch.'

‘You knocked my hand on purpose, Father. You did that on purpose.'

‘Get Herb. Get him over here now.'

‘I told you, Herb has to see his specialist this morning.' She walks to the window, breathes deep, calming breaths. ‘And what a day for him to be out on the roads. I've never seen such a fog.'

Then through the fog she sees those children still playing on the seesaw and the rhythm of squeaking wood on metal is like the old man's wheezing lungs. It irritates her, as does the children's constant bickering. She hunches and shrugs her shoulders, attempting to ease the ache in her neck. Too much knitting. She's been locked inside for days watching him or the television and knitting, always knitting. Her arm is aching this morning. If only that fog would clear and the sun would come out, she could go for a walk in her garden, go to the supermarket.

He whines at her. She glances at the bed, then back to the window. She has served this old master too long. She wants him gone, wants . . . wants something more than she has.

‘How much longer are we going to keep this up for?' one of the children says.

‘Until one of us falls. That's the rules.'

‘It's a crazy game.'

‘Give up then.'

Shouldn't they be in school today? Polly thinks as she sits again, takes up her knitting and methodically begins picking up lost stitches. It's too difficult. It's all too difficult. Better to unravel a few rows. ‘Lord.' Half of her morning's work lost because of that selfish old man.

He waits, watches, chomps on his gums. He will not be ignored. He made certain they didn't ignore him when he was young. He whipped them into sitting up and taking notice. He's lost his whip. He's told her he wants Herb, and she's not getting Herb. He had ten children; eight escaped him. Only two left to manipulate now.

Through slitted eyes he watches his youngest remove her spectacles and polish them. He waits until she's entangled in wool, her concentration on her knitting, then, with a huge effort of will, he hits her with his final weapon.

‘I've done it in my pants.' His whine trembles with satisfaction.

Polly looks up from her knitting. ‘The nursing sister took care of . . . of your needs this morning, dear. She told me.'

‘I said, I done it, and it's your fault. Your rotten food's gone right through me.'

She sniffs, lifts a corner of his blanket and peels it back. ‘Oh, Father!' She steps back, back. ‘You did that on purpose. You . . . you . . . you are an evil, dirty old man.'

As she runs from the room the jackal laughs.

 

The hands of the clock have turned. An hour has gone and Polly is dialling her brother's mobile phone. Her skirt is wet, her feet are bare, her fine grey hair is in disarray.

‘Hello there.' Herb's voice comes on the line, the voice of sanity.

‘Herb. You have to help me.'

‘Oh, it's you, Poll? I'll be there directly. Just leaving his office now. Bad news from the x-ray. It looks like the other bugger is worse off than the original one. He says he'll do them together when he can get me a bed.'

‘Herb –'

‘Is he dead?' There is hope in her brother's voice, but Polly kills that hope.

‘He soiled himself, Herb.'

‘Oh, Christ. Okay, I'm coming now. Let him sit in it until I get there, Poll.'

‘It's too late for that. I brought the hose in and hosed him. I don't know what got into me, Herb. It must have been temporary insanity. I'll tell them I didn't know what I was doing, except they'll know I wasn't insane because I turned off the electric heater first and put it outside the door – and I took off the new beanie I knitted him for his birthday too –'

‘You hosed him!'

‘Yes. And bring some grease with you, Herb. That seesaw in the park needs some grease put on it. It's driving me mad this morning.'

‘You said you hosed him?'

‘He deserved it, Herb. He's a dirty, wicked old man –'

‘So you cleaned him up, Poll? What's he doing?'

‘Nothing. He kept asking for water, Herb, and he pulled all my stitches off . . . so . . . so I gave him water. I stood at the door and kept on giving it to him too, shooting that hose at him like it was napalm and he was the enemy. I was burning him, burning him and loving it –'

‘Hold on to yourself there, girl. I'm in the car now and I'll have to hang up or the coppers will get me – if they can see any bloody thing through this pea-souper. It's a white-out. I can't even see the white lines. Are you all right for me to hang up?'

Polly nods, places the phone down then walks to the back door where she peers out at a paling fence separating her father's land from the park. Her long distance vision is poor without her spectacles. She has left them . . . somewhere. For minutes she stands on the doorstep, watching the two children on the seesaw.

One is dark, the other fair. They look familiar. Perhaps she has seen them at church. She calls to them, but they ignore her. Slowly she returns to her father's room where she wipes haphazardly at the floor, wipes at her father with the same towel, places the washcloth strategically then wipes at the wall while the ceiling rains its last drips onto her hair.

 

Herb Flinders is the family harbinger of death. He was twenty-five when his mother died. He stood in a public telephone booth at the post office, sniffing back tears and feeding in wet pennies while the operator connected him to family members. Over the past forty-five years Herb has passed on the news of his brother Arthur's death, of brother Norm's, of Dave's, of two sisters' untimely deaths. He's made calls for lost nephews, lost brothers-in-law then, more recently, he told of his wife's death.

He is only sixty-nine, but moves like a man of eighty. His hips have had it. Four years ago when he retired, he was a vital man. Now he's an old age pensioner, too old to be bound to a father who should have died years ago.

Herb sighs, turns on his headlights. They hit a white glare and bounce back. He's driving blind, but driving a modern car, bought new when he retired, so he'd be eligible for the pension. Every time he drives it, it reminds him of all the places he and his wife had planned to go. She got cancer, then his hips started eroding. So much for dreams.

He squints through the fog and thinks of a life free of filial duty, thinks too of his share of the old man's estate. The house is old, but it's in South Melbourne where housing prices have skyrocketed. Given its position and the size of the land, it could go for close on a million – maybe more than a million. Split amongst five, a million dollars still goes a long way. But if they split it the way Moni is planning to split it, that could make him filthy rich – and bugger his old age pension.

A small black book he keeps in his glove box is well worn; each of his siblings' names and numbers are written there, though five have been blacked out – and poor old Robert's is soon to be blacked out. A threadbare gold ribbon marks Moni's details. He always calls Moni first. She's the family solicitor, the family realist, ten years his junior, so still working, though she doesn't need to work. Conversations with Moni invariably open with two fast questions: ‘Is he dead?' and ‘Did you get the old bugger to sign that will?'