Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories (23 page)

That will is of her making. She wrote it two years ago, apportioning their father's chattels as she thought fit – only after they found his current will and learned he'd left his all to the RSL. Moni typed it up, had it witnessed by a couple of her colleagues, then posted it up for Herb, told him to get his father to sign it. It's been sitting in the glove box with his black book since, worthless without that signature, but the old bugger would refuse to sign, so Herb hasn't offered it for signing. But for the past year he has been practising his father's signature, filling pages with it, then burning them. Maybe it's time. He and Polly need that money. Moni doesn't want it, and the other buggers don't deserve it. They never come near the old coot, haven't in fifteen years.

Herb parks his car in the drive, sits a while, then takes a pen from his pocket, the will from his glove box, and reads it one last time. A fifth of the estate is to be split between the other living siblings, just so they won't challenge the will, Moni said, but the rests gets chopped right down the middle, half for him and half for Polly,
for their loving care and companionship during my latter years
. The old bugger wouldn't have chosen those words, but they were true enough.

‘Time it was signed,' he mutters, and he does it. It's a beauty too, a drunken spider's final stagger across the page. No one is going to question that signature, not even Polly. He seals it, places it into the envelope, pops it into his breast pocket as he eases his aching hips from the seat, gets his feet on the ground, reaches for his walking stick and starts towards the house.

Polly doesn't hear Herb's key in the front door, doesn't hear his rubber soles on the carpeted floor or the tap-tap of his walking stick. Her knitting needles are clicking fast, making up lost ground. Her elbow lifts, releasing the pale blue wool from its cache as he places a hand on her shoulder.

Like a startled cat, she springs to her feet. ‘He's still breathing,' she says. ‘How can he still be breathing, Herb?'

Herb looks down at the naked form of his father, crucified on his bare vinyl covered mattress, a wet face washer neatly covering his genitals, his hair a wet grey stubble left clinging to dead clay a season too long, his lips a mottled purple slash. They match his eye sockets, the right eye an accusing slit, the left eye closed.

‘Bloody cold in here,' Herb says.

‘I thought it would be dangerous to bring the heater back in.'

‘Shit, yes!' Herb says. ‘What the bloody hell did you think you were doing, Poll! What possessed you to go out there and get that hose?'

‘He soiled himself . . . '

The hose is coiled like a green snake across the floor, its spray-gun head poised to strike. Herb looks at it, considers it for a moment before hooking it up with his walking stick. The striking head in his hand, he coils the hose as he follows it down the passage and out through the back door to the fence, where he drops it beside the tap.

On his return, he looks at his shoes and at the water oozing from the carpet beneath his shoes. He looks up at the dripping walls.

‘You made a bloody mess of this room, girl.'

She's not listening. Her face is turned to the window. ‘I'll hose them next if they don't go home. Listen to them.'

‘Who?'

‘Those children. They've been arguing all morning.'

He listens, shakes his head. ‘I can't hear anyone. I'm getting as deaf as a post lately. I'll be forking out for a hearing-aid next. Have you called the ambulance?'

‘They'll only . . . only do something to save him. And I can't bring them in here.'

‘What do you suggest we do with him?'

‘He's going blue, isn't he?'

‘He doesn't look too healthy, girl.' He looks closely at his father's slitted eye, lifts the left lid, peers into it, shrugs, stands fondling the address book in his pocket. ‘At least while he's alive you've got your house. You've got to consider that.'

‘They won't sell it, will they, Herb? They won't make me move out?'

She doesn't know about his and Moni's plan because she's too honest for her own good. He needs his share of the estate to pay for two hip replacements. He's been waiting for two years to get one of them done. He knows he shouldn't have let his hospital insurance lapse when he and his wife went on the pension, knows he shouldn't have bought his new car either, but this country owed him something, didn't it? He's worked his guts out, paid his taxes since he left school at fourteen. Wasn't it about time the government started giving back something to the workers instead of handing it all out to a mob of bludgers?

He licks his lips, steps back, looks at his sister, wondering who she sees as being the greatest threat to her claim on the family home. His hand rises, wipes his own guilty need from his lips, gathers it into his hand to seal into a tight fist.

‘Where would they expect me to live, Herb?'

‘I can't rightly say, Poll, can't speak for them. You being the youngest, and likely to outlive the lot of us. With you staying on in the house, no one is going to get a penny out of the estate. He's got no money.'

‘They got away. They had their families. They owe me something for the years I've looked after him.'

‘Me and Moni agree with you there, girl. We'll make sure you're all right.'

‘You won't let them put me out on the street?'

‘If I've told you once, I've told you a dozen times, you can move in with me – if we have to sell the house. Now shut up about it, Poll, and call the ambulance over here or by Christ, you're not going to have to worry about where you spend your future. You can't go around drowning old buggers in their beds, even if they do deserve it. I dunno how we're going to explain this to them.'

‘I sopped up a bit of water from the carpet. I stopped it getting into the passage. Which reminds me. The washing will be ready to go in the dryer.'

‘It'll take a month of Sundays to dry this out. You'd better bring in some more towels and see if we can soak up some of it. Bring a dry mop too and I'll dry that ceiling off a bit.'

She hurries off to do his bidding while he walks the room, checks the passage. Not much has seeped out. His shoes squelch back to the bed. ‘Bring a bucket too, Poll, and some pyjamas and socks for him. I don't know about him going blue, but his feet are going yellow.'

She transfers washing to the dryer, puts in another load and returns with towels and bucket, mop and pyjamas. Herb rolls his father onto a dry towel while Polly spreads the others on the carpet, walks them into the ooze, counts, knits.

‘Put that down, Poll,' Herb says, pulling hand-knitted socks over clay feet.

‘I had to unpick five rows. He pulled all the stitches off. Don't talk to me for a minute, Herb, I have to count while I do it. Purl two, light blue, purl three, dark. Do you think you should shave him? He'd look better if you shaved him. Medium blue, purl five, dark blue, purl three, light blue two. It might be better if you drove him to the hospital while I mop up, get some heaters in here. I could bring in the fan heater from the kitchen.'

Herb shaves his father, clothes him, rolls him into a blanket, lifts him into the wheelchair and Polly wheels him out to the car where together they heave and haul him in, settle him into the back seat, buckle him in.

‘I'll drop him off then come straight back and have some lunch, Poll. That fog isn't lifting. Rotten weather to be bringing people up here for a funeral.'

The old man's chest stills and his aging offspring look at him, then at each other, hope in their lifted chins. But in the park the seesaw squeaks and the old man's lungs wheeze, take in air.

Polly walks to the fence, sees the fog shrouded silhouettes of the duo standing on the seesaw keeping the plank steady with the backwards and forwards rhythm of their feet.

‘Go and play somewhere else. Go and play on the swings,' she calls to them. ‘You'll make yourselves sick with all this jiggling.'

Bone grating against bone, Herb's hips walk him to her side, his hand again fondling the soft leather cover of his little black book. He wants to make those phone calls and get it done. He needs that operation, wants his mobility back, wants to drive up to Queensland where it's warm, maybe take young Poll with him for company. He needs a smoke too, and that he can have. He lights one, leans a while, dreams of Queensland and warmth. A few more minutes of sitting in a cold car won't do the old bugger any harm.

‘Who are you talking to, Poll?'

‘Those children. They've been playing on that seesaw all morning.'

‘There's no one there. It's too bloody cold for kids to be out there today. You're seeing things, girl.'

The children laugh, stare at her, the dark one holding a finger to her lips. ‘
Shush.'
Perhaps she is older than Polly had previously thought. Such an odd little face.

‘You should be at school,' she calls.

They don't reply, but sing on.

The hands of the clock have turned a full circle. There are five minutes left to midnight. Only one small globe sheds its light in a room unaccustomed to light. Herb drove his father to three hospitals then had to bring him home. No beds at the hospital for pensioners. Bloody hospitals. Too busy practising their computer and robot surgery to worry about old buggers dying.

They've put him in the spare room, plenty of spare rooms in this house. Next door, three heaters work overtime drying out his old room. The vinyl hospital mattress has stood up to a thousand minor floods and some major scrubbings; they moved it to his new bed. His colour isn't good, but he's still getting a breath in every minute or so, sitting propped high on dry pillows, wearing his colourful beanie. Down the hall in the laundry, the dryer works on. It's had a long hard day of drying, hasn't stopped since the first load of towels. It has dried sheets, blankets, now it's working on wet pillows. They're fibre filled and seem to be drying well – as his room is drying well – apart from the carpet.

They got their story worked out, worked it out for the doctor, who called in around five. Said he'd had a major accident, made a terrible mess – it was either rip up that carpet or scrub it. He knows this family well. He swallowed their lie.

Herb sits turning the pages of the newspaper. Polly is still counting stitches, listening to the squeal of that seesaw, moving slowly now, keeping time with the old man's reflex gasps for life.

Click-click, click-click. She knits a row between his breaths, knitting fast, praying he won't draw the next. The doctor told them it would be over before midnight. It's almost midnight and they're still waiting. Polly has finished the front of that little sweater and started on the back.

‘He's ninety-eight, Herb.'

Click-click.

‘He's had a good life, Poll.'

Click-click.

‘He should have died when he had that pneumonia two years ago. Me and Moni thought he was a goner.' That's when they'd opened the will, found out he'd left the lot to the RSL. ‘He should've croaked that time he fell and broke his hip – or when he had his first stroke.'

‘That was fifteen years ago, Herb.'

‘Yeah. I was only fifty-five, still working then. Nancy was alive and well. We still had our youngest living at home. Christ. It only seems like yesterday, Poll. A man might have done a lot if he'd been free of the old bugger back then.'

‘I might have got married if he'd died then, Herb. I was only thirty-five. Remember Alan Cooper, how he was going to Tasmania and he wanted me to go with him?'

‘He was a nice bloke, Poll. You should have gone with him.'

‘I might have had my own children now to knit for . . . '

‘You might have. You should have.'

Polly sighs. ‘It will be nice to see everyone again. Do you think they'll bring little Pollyanna up for the funeral?'

‘I reckon they will, Poll. I'm hoping they do. I haven't seen them for six months. That drive down there with my hips the way they are is getting too bloody long.'

‘I wonder if Bill and his wife will come down?'

‘It's a longer drive from Queensland.'

‘Yes. Remember when Father had his stroke? They all came to be at his deathbed. I had most of them staying here and the house was so full and happy.'

‘I remember. For three days we sat around his hospital bed, then Arthur keels over outside while he's having a smoke. Dead of a heart attack in front of a bloody hospital. He was only two years older than you, Poll. Then Janette went. Then Louise. Then Norm – and they say poor old Robert is on his last legs, and him two years younger than me.'

‘Louise went when he had his pneumonia, didn't she?' Stitches fly from needle to needle. ‘Janette went on his ninetieth birthday. Arthur when he had that stroke –' She stops knitting, stares at Herb, her eyes wide, her mouth round. And she's on her feet.

‘He's reabsorbing us, Herb.'

‘Sit down, Poll.'

‘No. He gave us life, now he's taking us back, one by one!' Polly walks to the door, her knitting in her hands, the wool spinning, bouncing behind her. ‘It's them. The children. They're waiting for him to reabsorb you, Herb.'

‘You're losing your marbles, Poll. Your brains are getting as tangled as that bloody wool. Sit down, girl, and I'll make you a cup of tea.'

‘I knew I knew them. When I saw them this morning, I knew I'd seen them somewhere. They were playing marbles in the hospital corridor the night Arthur died.'

‘You're raving – not that I blame you, he'd drive anyone around the twist, but there are no kids out there. It's damn near midnight, black as pitch, and the fog is thick enough to cut with a knife.'