Hill of Grace (14 page)

‘God walks with some of them too.'

‘If I had my time over, William.'

William pointed towards the middle of the canopy. ‘You would've said the same thing.'

‘No.' Henry stepped on a branch to reach the centre. ‘All I ask, William, is that you keep your dates in your study. I don't care if the world beats a path to your door. Even if you're right, which would be good. I could avoid the worst of old age.'

‘The middle branch . . . This is the good news, Henry. I can't lock it in my study. And if the bookworms and Rohwers of the world – '

Henry reached just beyond his balance. ‘You don't hear a word – ' Slipping, coming to rest with blunt branches in his ribs, a bleeding scratch down the length of his neck. ‘William . . .'

‘Henry, careful.'

Henry freed himself and climbed down, handing back the pruning shears and shaking his head. ‘I hope you're right.'

William shrugged. ‘I can finish off if you like.'

What Rose Drummond called ‘chow mein' was cooked in her near-new Namco pressure cooker, whistling steam every minute or so in tribute to Saigons never seen and Shanghais never tasted. As Nathan buttered bread she explained how it was the latest thing: carrots, peas and top-grade mince, doused with Keen's curry and covered with as much cabbage as a Namco could hold, steamed down and served with bowls of rice beside slices of Kraft cheese on ‘continental bread'.

‘My dad would never eat this,' he commented, thinking how chow mein was the Joe Aronson of the mouth.

‘And what do your people eat?' Rose asked, breaking off a piece of fig nougat and placing it beside him, immersing her hands in water the temperature of molten steel and scrubbing Bob's ashtrays lovingly as her favourite pittosporum rustled gently outside the window.

‘Pickled pig is big. Ham, bacon, pork. Bruno, next door, does the killing for Dad.'

Describing the beast tied up by the back legs and strung up from the myrtle beside his old swing. Squealing and then calming, as its throat was cut and blood went everywhere, spraying out over Bluma's vegetables and into the Santa Anna William hardly ever mowed with his blunt and rusty hand-mower. ‘Then Bruno cuts it up and takes some for his efforts, including the blood.'

Rose turned and frowned.

‘Blutwurst, a sausage you wouldn't give your worst enemy. Then Mum's out with a knife and the Saxa – salted, pickled, and Dad carrying the jars into the cellar. Although it fries up okay, I suppose.' Going on to explain how anything tasted good besides his mum's pickled turnips.

‘I could try some of these meals, if you like.'

‘Don't worry, Mrs Drummond, it's not something I'll miss. Apart from the custard cake.'

‘Ah – '

‘Which is already taken care of.'

Rose then told him about her day at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, where she went most days as a volunteer visitor – ‘talking the legs off any poor soul who's willing to listen to me' – beside a fellow volunteer called Terese, a newly arrived New Australian with a dozen words of English but no confidence to use them. Rose generally sent her to the cafeteria on errands. ‘“Give them this piece of paper and they'll know,” I'll say as I scribble. “Turf Virginia, ten pack, ten shillings . . . now, you know how much change to bring back?”' Other times she'd try to draw Terese into the conversation. ‘Now, Terese, tell us about your village – Vienna, wasn't it?'

Rose explained how both she and Bob were involved with the hospital auxiliary – Bob mending and restoring old wheelchairs in the shed of the shifted tennis ball, most nights after the
Colgate
Hour
, and she as a Lavender Lady.

She stirred the cabbage, inhaling deeply and smiling at him. ‘There are lots of jobs: the sweets trolley, delivering papers . . . but I just like to talk. Especially the ones that seem alone. You can tell 'em. Specially when everyone else's got family around.'

Rose of a morning, after Bob had left for work, setting off in their Vauxhaul for a specially reserved park; unloading another gleaming, mechanically faultless chair, wheeling it down to the basement as porters scattered imaginary rose petals in her path.

‘I had a young lass this morning, lost her kiddy, mind you, this is all confidential. As it turned out it was just as well, seeing how her bloke was a . . .'

Nathan never learned about the father, his faults being passed over in a shower of curry. Eyetie or Arab, or maybe one of those wandering types, hanging around outside the Challa Gardens Hotel at closing, draped in black leather across a mechanically faultless motorbike he spent his days perfecting. Moving out at sunset to hunt the innocent, and the next morning, taking his clothes and ‘splitting' before the sun rose and another disillusioned girl reached for her Balfours aprons.

‘I tried everything to take her mind off it. Of course, the parents were off in . . . Czechoslovakia.' She stared down into her dishwater, unhappy with the temperature and suds, pulling the plug and refilling it, sparing Nathan the details of how the girl had let the little kiddy go hungry, for days, weeks, crying, and not a single neighbour, not a one mind you, knocked on the door to ask if they could do something. No, not the Australia I know . . .

‘Cold hands, warm heart,' she whispered, as the water filled up. ‘I've left my ring on.' Removing it. Thinking how cold dishwater could get nothing clean. ‘Still, maybe it's all for the best.'

Seeing how lovelessness only led to more of the same.

‘How's that?' Nathan asked.

She turned off the tap and looked out of the window. ‘I talked about the movies, but even Rodney Taylor couldn't bring her around. The koalas at Cleland, which she remembered as a kiddy. The snake show near the children's hospital. As it turned out, she was one for the racing vehicle. Bob's taken us to Rowley Park speedway, but she said her people used to live there, so to speak, every Friday night.'

As she droned in his ear like an Anglicised Rohwer, Nathan looked up and saw a crucifix on the wall: Christ staring down at a stray pea, stranded in the middle of a melamine savanna. Explaining the most simple of spiritual conundrums: yes, he thought, William Miller doesn't own Jesus, or God – the Messiah lives on kitchen walls beside hand-painted enamel plates of Broken Hill. The Messiah is happy with Rose's chow mein. And no one has a monopoly on him. For all his dates and Bibles and books, my father has done less to spread the word of God than the Drummonds.

Eventually Rose stopped talking, something to do with the Myer silver-service restaurant she'd been to with Bob, however that related to anything.

‘Are you Anglican?' Nathan asked.

She looked around, surprised that the topic had even come up. ‘Bob's Baptist, but he keeps the Bible in the bedside drawer, if you know what I mean.'

‘I know. My father's the opposite.'

She had no reply, searching for other words to skirt around it, like the topic of lost babies and why the Russians and Chinese were making bombs when all we wanted to do was get along. Not the Australia I know. Still, warm hearts rub off onto other warm hearts and for the kiddy there was still Heaven, praised twice yearly with a visit to St Polycarps (weddings and funerals aside). But mostly God was worshipped on her melamine altar, in the carrots chopped and scones kneaded lovingly to the confessions of
Blue Hills
.

Nathan was sent outside to fetch Bob, sitting in a shed of wood and fibro construction, built above a crumbling slab of concrete he'd mixed and laid himself before he knew anything about adding gravel. ‘Tea's ready,' Nathan said, popping his head in uneasily.

If the kitchen was Rose's domain, then this was Bob's. It was a place for him to settle in an old arm-chair rescued from an eight-wheeled Bragshaw sit-up. Turf was smoked as broken spokes were re-soldered and split upholstery patched with a kit from the maintenance workshop. Wheels and handles and seats hung from every inch of the walls, forming a sea of parts around a workbench full of ex-S.A.R. tools – as he stared out of the window, working, like Rose staring into her pittosporum.

‘Come in.' Choosing to reveal himself rather than hide in a forest of brake cables hanging from the roof like rampant asparagus fern.

‘You're well set up.'

Bob stood up. ‘You could learn a lot about trains from wheelchairs.'

‘How's that?'

He just smiled. ‘I can smell her chow mein.'

‘Beats pickled pig.'

‘She only has seven meals, in rotation, every two weeks: chow mein, stew, chops, corned beef, roast lamb, bangers and mash – then there's her off nights: bubble and squeak, fish and chips, baked beans and
I couldn't be bothered cooking
. . . whatever you do, don't suggest anything new.
I try my best . . .
' Nathan smiled as Bob locked the shed. ‘Once I suggested she do a cookery course – ' ‘Bob!'

‘Coming!'

As they went in, passing through a gap in a hedge of sword fern, Bob looked up at the stars and said, ‘Know anything about constellations?'

‘No.'

‘Pity.' He limped as they went, coughing a few times and clearing his throat, explaining how it was an interest he'd like to develop.

Standing in the hallway, strong with the smell of Mr Sheen, Nathan looked out at what remained of the sky and thought, chow mein and continental, now I'm living. Which was his way of using the smallest things to describe the biggest.

Phil Drummond was legal and had grown sideburns to prove it. He sat forward in his chair, shovelling chow mein into his mouth and drinking milk he'd made cold with an ice-cube. ‘See, Nathan, this isn't a society of poets and sculptors. I'd like to be an actor, but I'm told I'd need to go to London. So we dispense Bex, and sell Lux off the back of a train.'

Bob pulled a long string of cabbage from his mouth. ‘What's wrong with that?'

‘Nothing, only if young people – ' ‘You've got more choices now . . .'

Phil smiled. ‘Thank you, o tribal ancient. You also didn't have chow mein in your day?'

Bob grinned. ‘Exactly.'

‘The thing is, Nathan, I'm happy in Kilburn, strangely enough, so I need a trade. Like my dad, and his dad, and his dad's dad's dad, and every Drummond that's ever drawn breath.'

‘Or run out of it,' Bob said, with a full mouth.

‘Therein lies a story.'

Rose came in with a pot of hot tea. ‘Phillip, you're not being stupid?'

‘Mother, please pour the tea while it's still drinkable.'

And because she insisted it needed longer to draw, he came around himself and poured his and Nathan's. ‘You do drink tea, Herr Muller?'

Nathan choked on a lump of mince the size of a golf ball. ‘Yes, please.' And clearing his throat, ‘What's the story?'

Rose started eating with a knife and fork, piling a bite-sized portion over the prongs and eating, looking up to make sure Nathan wasn't shocked, putting down her knife and fork, wiping her mouth and placing her hands in her lap. A sequence she repeated with every mouthful, finishing a full half hour after the others.

‘It has to do with Phillip's great grandfather,' she began.

Phil sat forward. ‘He was riding his bike down a hill when a pheasant, escaped from someone's yard, charged his bike.'

‘Why?'

‘Territorial. Pheasants are funny like that. Straight into his front spokes, jamming the wheel, throwing him through the air. Crash, bang, head first onto the road. Three days in hospital but he never regained consciousness.'

Bob moved about uncomfortably. ‘It wasn't a pheasant.'

‘You told me it was.'

‘Still, there's worse ways to die.'

‘Anyway,
Ma'ma'
, I was just telling Nathan that I'm an actor on the side.' Phil went on to explain the acting role he'd just landed, as a bridegroom in
The Whitehorse Inn
, walking on stage with a Scot the age of his mother, staring adoringly into her eyes and repeatedly mumbling, ‘I do,' followed by their big line together, ‘We do.'

It was a small role, he was off in two minutes, but he had some business in the chorus as a waiter in lederhosen, and anyway, you had to start somewhere. The problem was, this was where most amateurs ended up too, mouthing the same lines forty years later, as eight rows of relatives on discount tickets nudged each other at the appropriate moment. ‘If I don't have a lead role by twenty-five, I'll give up,' he explained. ‘Either that, or would somebody please shoot me.'

Bob mopped up his chow mein with a thick piece of bread.

‘Bob,' Rose warned, chewing each mouthful forty times.

‘Nathan,' Bob said, looking up from under raised eyebrows, ‘Rose would have you believe this is the South Australian Hotel, |but she knows,' turning his gaze to his wife, ‘that if a man mops up his gravy he's not necessarily – ' ‘Children!' Phil waved his bread about in the air. They stopped and listened. ‘Mother, your tea is ready.'

‘Not yet.'

The meal continued with endless renditions of
The Goodbye
Song
as Phil essayed the whole cast's inadequacies and how he'd been passed over through sheer jealousy, as tailors and butchers and stockbrokers sung mostly out of tune songs through their nose and unknowingly overacted with more ham than a Lutheran's cold cellar (having heard the story of the slaughtered pig). Sets that wobbled every time someone passed through a door and an orchestra which smelt of mothballs and had to be back at the Klemzig aged care by ten fifteen.

Apart from that he was having fun.

A lecture on new antibiotics was discussed besides Nathan's early progress as a fridge mechanic. Nathan explained his initiation and Rose scolded Bob for having taken part (in fact, having organised it) as she finally finished her meal and decided the tea was ready. Phil explained to Nathan how they hadn't come up with a new initiation in living memory and how there was really a lot of latent bum lust involved. Bob warned his son of the dangers of such things in the world of amateur theatre but Phil just replied, ‘The closest I'll come to anyone's bum is a suppository.'