Frederick's Coat (10 page)

‘And Danny’s personality makes it worse.’ Johno said it for him.

‘Well, he
is
an exceptionally sensitive boy. Could even be said he’s fragile. A private school might have less of this bullying behaviour. Otherwise you can apply for home-schooling on either religious grounds or some strongly held principle that you can convince the education authorities to accept. Either way I’m afraid he’s in for a rather difficult few years.’

Both Mavis and Wilson Reed agreed that home-schooling was the best choice. Mavis was happy to supervise. Johno felt he was agreeing to a cop-out, but Danny’s singular personality was an argument in itself, and if he got bored being at home he could always go back to school.

Wilson garnered the support of academic colleagues in putting a case forward on Danny’s behalf, stretching the facts somewhat by saying he showed signs of being autistic, making much of his artistic talent. And Wilson declared in a sworn affidavit he was prepared to give many hours a week of his own time towards developing that talent. Having Mavis living in the home helped their case. Danny Ryan’s somewhat unusual life had taken another turn.

D
anny could quickly spot him, tall and wildly bearded in his distinctive, heavy grey overcoat, standing close to his supermarket trolley with its black plastic covering, or hear his deep bass voice, speaking to an unheeding public. At home he would recall the lines, speaking them aloud, at least in snatches.

O the mind, mind has mountains, cliffs of fall. Frightful, sheer …

At twelve not understanding them, yet drawn to Frederick as if he held some secret, a key to another world. The man seemed to have a direct connection to the deeper, unarticulated art in Danny, the part of him that felt at one with his dreamscapes because he saw so much in them. But Frederick could show him even greater panoramas, even if their full meaning would only come later.

When he showed Frederick a notepad of his pencil drawings, the homeless man accorded Danny close to fatherly affection. Frederick was full of interesting information on all sorts of subjects, and Danny had kind of adjusted to his smell, though it was always overpowering at first; he never failed to come away from Frederick’s company without feeling he’d learned something, usually important and often profound.

He showed his father rough sketches he’d made of Frederick, and that he was working on the subject in detail. ‘Especially his coat. He only takes it off when it’s really hot. I like its pattern. I like … Well, I like Frederick’s coat. I want to see if I can reproduce it in watercolours first. Wilson says if I want depth, then oils are best. The trolley’s hard to draw but at the right angle it’s an object of beauty, like a miniature
ship you can see right through — if it wasn’t full of his things covered in black plastic. I like trying the different perspectives.’

Technical talk like this owed much to Wilson Reed, to the art books he and Danny pored over. Johno didn’t mind his son going out alone on a Saturday; it was his busiest trading day at the pub and he had no time for anything but ensuring it went smoothly. Not a day went by, he told Danny proudly, without some new customer arriving saying he’d heard about the place and immediately being met by Danny’s drawings and paintings. ‘Which never disappoint. In fact most people are stunned.’

On Johno’s instructions Danny, if accosted by some older stranger with questionable intentions, was to say that his father was nearby ‘and he’s a boxer’. In any event Danny should be ready to ‘call for help and/or run like hell’. Part of Johno was glad Danny was getting out and about in the supposedly big, bad world, even if it was only hanging around in daylight hours in public parks with a man who had mild mental problems. Danny and his funny little replacement hat might attract unkind attention yet at the same time harden him up, jolt some of that sublime innocence from him, or would be his undoing in a world his father knew as often hard and cruel.

It was Mavis who tried to interpret the snippets of poetry Danny recited after encounters with Frederick. The one about the ‘cliffs of fall’, she said, meant ‘a person’s thoughts are fraught with danger, as they have great insights’. If Mavis was worried about Danny’s friendship with Frederick she said nothing, and never asked Johno to stop the relationship. She just warned Danny to be careful of the other homeless men in the parks, not least the drunks.

It wasn’t so much the poems Frederick recited that attracted Danny as the rhythm of his delivery, helped by the sonorous voice. The heavy coat, though, was almost an obsession — its intricately woven thread, the protection it signified, as well as a former elegance. Then there was the supermarket trolley that seemed to have a personality of its own — the squeaky wheels, the way the wire hummed if an object was run along it, as if the reverberations might tell Danny something more. At
night he imagined the trolley bobbing on the ocean with the splendid coat as its sail and Captain Frederick the Homeless proudly, defiantly, at the helm.

Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me.
When Danny asked his father what these words meant, his father said, ‘You’re asking me? Hell, kid, what would I know about poetry?’

But when he saw Danny’s disappointment said, ‘Okay. Say them again.’ This time listening hard as Danny recited.

‘I think it means he’s in despair.’

‘What’s despair?’

‘Like this.’ Johno put his hands over his face and looked lost and miserable. ‘He feels so bad he finds his own taste bitter, awful.’ Then he paused for a moment. ‘I’ve known that feeling and it’s not a good place to be. You friends with Frederick now?’

‘I guess,’ said Danny.

‘Want me to make sure the guy’s all right?’

‘No. Thanks. He’s a good person.’

‘You’re giving him money?’

‘Just a two-dollar coin to the ones I like. Frederick a bit more. I know you don’t mind, Dad. And Mavis has told me to keep my eye out for crazies and weirdos, the drunks most of all.’

That first time over a year ago when Danny gave Frederick a
twenty-dollar
note and Frederick asked, ‘Tell me why you gave me this much money.’

Danny said he didn’t know.

‘What’s your last name?’

‘Ryan.’

‘I have no last name. I’m just Frederick.’ He took off his hat, let it drop on the ground to reveal dark, staring eyes. ‘Lost my right to the family name, and nature is at fault, not my family or me. Explain yourself.’

‘What have I done wrong?’ If things got tricky he could always run.

‘It’s too much, son. Two bucks, sure. We all appreciate it. Except the ungrateful drunks. If you’d given one of them this twenty he’d want fifty.’

‘That’s what my dad says. They always want more.’

‘Scum,’ said Frederick. ‘I have nothing to do with them.’

Yet Danny had seen him drinking, wiping his lips and then staring at the empty bottle. ‘I don’t give the drunks anything, not anymore. Like you said, they don’t appreciate it.’

Frederick said, ‘I drink, see. But it’s for solace, dulls the pain — when I’m of a rational enough mind to know what I lost.’

‘What pain?’

‘Up here.’ Frederick tapped his head.

Danny expected dust or maybe insects to fall out of the thick hair so dirty it was matted and dull.

‘Sorry.’ He didn’t know what else to say.

‘Nothing to be sorry about. I have my burden. The people going by us have theirs. Am I crying?’

‘You might in private.’ Danny grinned awkwardly. ‘Do you?’

‘No. It’s like crying when it rains.’ Frederick waved the money again. ‘Now you take this back.’

‘No. It’s okay, really. My dad gives me good pocket money. He has a business, this pub, and he—’

‘I know. He’s a big, tough-looking man. But very affectionate, least with you.’ The man’s mouth tightened. ‘I had two children. Lost’em.’ Tapped his head.

‘Sorry,’ said Danny a second time. Frederick’s face had hardened; maybe he was struggling to live up to his no-crying philosophy.

‘That’s not a word you hear out here,’ said Frederick. ‘There’s pity but only out of self-interest. I don’t trust any of them.’ His sweeping gesture indicated his fellow homeless. Yet Danny saw that though the eyes were fierce the tone was gentle.

‘Did your family stop talking to you?’

‘We drifted apart. My condition, see? Effectively they’re dead because
I live out here, in the parks and streets. And they live with their mother.’

Almost saying sorry again. Instead he told Frederick, ‘I don’t have a mother. She left us when I was little.’

‘Shameful woman,’ he said. ‘But I’m sure she had her reasons.’

‘She writes me sometimes and sends me gifts.’

‘But your father is your best gift, right?’

‘Yes.’ Danny’s smile came spontaneously.

‘I wondered why there was no mother with you and your old man.’

‘You sound, like, normal when you say things like that.’

‘This is a good day. Sometimes I’m not.’

Danny said, ‘But you’re not dangerous, are you?’

‘What if I was? You frightened of me?’

‘My father’s a boxer.’

‘He looks like one,’ said Frederick. ‘Except I don’t believe you. That’s just something he told you to say. Right?’

‘It’s true. He can box.’

‘But he’s not a boxer.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because he has no scar tissue around his eyes and eyebrows. His nose is too straight. And besides, he looks too intelligent to have been involved in that brutish activity they call sport when it’s not,’ said Frederick. ‘It’s organised violence.’

‘He likes boxing.’

‘Then shame on your father’s head, too.’ Frederick ran his eyes up and down Danny. ‘Bet you don’t like boxing, eh?’

‘No …’

‘How many fights you had, kid?’

‘Me fight?’ Danny could only shake his head.

Frederick went over to his trolley, reached under the plastic cover and held up a wicked-looking knife. ‘This’, he said through gritted teeth that were stained yellow, ‘is my deterrent.’

Danny said nothing.

‘These parks look pretty to you, to everyone, right? That’s because
they manicure the lawns, sweep the paths, trim the shrubs and keep the trees under control. Even the statues get chemically cleaned of bird shit and city gunge. A pity they can’t douse the drunks and sexual predators, the wild runaway kids and the roaming gangs in a chemical, something that will cleanse them of their horrible, violent outlook.’

Frederick was standing by his trolley, with one protective hand over it, the coat open — it must be stifling in this heat — the other holding out the twenty dollars. ‘Too much, son,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It’s a lovely windfall but too much.’

‘You want me to take it back?’

‘I insist you do.’

‘What if I say no?’

‘I’ll soon drink it away.’

‘That’s okay.’

‘Your father would say, “See? It’s why you don’t give money to the homeless.”’

‘I wouldn’t tell him.’ Danny grinned as if it were their little secret.

‘Twenty bucks keeps me in booze about three days.’ Frederick seemed to want to provoke Danny. ‘You know what I get like when I start drinking. The anger comes out.’

‘Not at me.’

‘No. You’re an innocent kid. Anger at my condition. It’s what I was born with and there are times when I weaken and wish it was otherwise. You said you’re home-schooled. I forgot to ask how come.’

‘Some older boys picked on me. School didn’t suit me.’

‘Sometimes young people can be even more awful than embittered adults. I was given a terrible time at school on account of things I didn’t know I was saying or doing. Bloody cruel kids.’

‘My friends Mavis and Wilson say I’m a bit of a loner,’ said Danny. ‘But I don’t actually feel lonely.’

‘Glad to hear that,’ said Frederick. ‘Or I’d be thinking you made friends with me out of desperation. So you’re a budding artist with a supportive father, a woman who loves you like a mother and an academic
art mentor? Why do you come and talk to me?’

‘I learn things from you,’ Danny said. ‘I like it when you recite poems.’

‘You mean like this …’ Frederick drew his coat closed and lifted his head. ‘I quote Gerard Manley Hopkins. “The fine delight that fathers thought; the strong spur, live and lancing like the blowpipe flame. Breathes once and, quenchèd faster than it came, Leaves yet the mind a mother of immortal song.”’

And when Danny nodded encouragement Frederick continued, ‘“I want the one rapture of an inspiration. O then if in my lagging lines you miss, the roll, the rise, the carol, the creation —” Can you hear that, boy? You can, can’t you? Your born ear hears what no other child your age would. That’s why you’re here.’

His eyes bright with some kind of inner revelation, or so it seemed to Danny. The same uplifting feeling happening inside him.

‘You are a true artist, therefore a benign kind of thief of others’ ideas, of their creative energy, even if mine is mere regurgitating of another man’s poetic genius. You understand me and yet you don’t because the barrier of your young years is still partly blocking what I have to offer. Do you wish to be my friend?’

The question had Danny giddy with delight. Yes, being friends with this strange, stinking person. He could only nod lest his joy spill out. Frederick nodded back, then repeated the words of Hopkins, asked Danny to memorise them.

The following Saturday it had taken some walking through several city parks before Danny found Frederick in Dawes Point Park, a small green space down on the waterfront. He was sitting quietly on a bench, feet up, the temperature too high to be wearing his coat, draped neatly over his trolley.

‘Well?’ Frederick had hardly seemed to glance at him yet he knew Danny was there, standing diffidently a short distance away. ‘Did you recite the lines to your father?’

‘Yes. He doesn’t get it.’

‘I thought he wouldn’t. Do you?’

‘No. Even though you explained.’

The shoes, tied together by twine, came off their wire cage support and Frederick stood up. He had on a light shirt, like a sleeved singlet Danny’s great-grandfather had worn, except this was brown and had big wet patches of sweat under the arms; his trousers had been changed, to a pair in a lighter material. Danny wished it was cooler so he could see Frederick in his coat. His mind couldn’t separate coat from man; they existed together.

‘You’re not expected to. Suffice that you remembered them. Understanding will come, but your father is a lost cause.’

‘What do you mean?’ Danny’s defences instantly up.

‘Not in a month, a lifetime, of Sundays, will he get Hopkins’ meaning, his depth.’

‘But that’s okay, isn’t it?’

‘You love your father. I’m not criticising him, just stating the fact that he’ll never get to experience the power and purity of Hopkins.’

‘But you ask my dad a question about any boxer and he can tell you.’

‘I told you boxing is for brutes. Poetry is for a real man,’ said Frederick. ‘Or a young person with an open mind and a willing heart to learn. Your father owns a pub. That’s quite a name, Danny’s Drawings. He must be so proud of you.’

‘It embarrasses me when people point and talk about me.’

‘I don’t blame you. Never let the noise and fuss go to your head. Though I can see you’re a shy one for a boy so handsome.’ Frederick made to move. ‘Come. I’ll tell you about galaxies and the more-than-epic scale of the universe.’