Last Day in the Dynamite Factory (19 page)

‘Toasted cheese sandwiches, crunchy on the outside, squishy on the inside and a chocolate malted milk.'

‘After all this time?'

She sniggers. ‘Yes.' She downs an oyster, then picks up the newspaper with its sketches of Fletcher in the margins. ‘Who's this little fellow?'

‘Nobody.'

‘He looks like you – glasses and all.' She squints at Chris's writing. ‘Fletcher: is that his name? You're quite the artist.'

‘It's hardly art.'

‘Says who? I'll bet this little chap thinks he's art. Ask him.'

‘I wouldn't ask that little chap anything. He's got too big a mouth as it is.'

‘Why did you run away?'

‘Oh.' Chris takes another oyster. ‘I thought I wasn't wanted. I was wanted but it was a – a very difficult time and I got it wrong.' He pauses to remove a piece of shell. ‘I'm good at that.'

‘Have you run away again?'

‘No, although Diane would dispute that. I'm taking time out. Trying to digest some unexpected revelations about my … unconventional family history.'

Bertie raises her eyebrows.

‘Did I tell you about my parents?'

‘You were adopted, weren't you? By your … aunt?'

‘Yes – my birth mother's sister and her husband, Ben. My mother was killed when I was four months old.' Chris takes a mouthful of beer. ‘All my life I've been told I was the product of my mother's affair with a man called Jack Ward. Turns out to be bullshit. Ben, who I thought was no relation at all is, in fact, my father. My birth father.'

Bertie looks confused. ‘I'm not sure I get it.'

‘You get it. Ben had an affair with his wife's sister and got her pregnant with me. When my mother died, he and my aunt adopted me.'

‘But … but that's bizarre. When did you find all this out?'

‘A couple of weeks ago. My aunt Jo died last year. Ben and I were packing up her things and I found her journals. Didn't really intend to snoop but I couldn't resist looking at one from Port Moresby which happened to contain the dynamite.'

Bertie takes a mouthful of wine and searches the darkness. ‘I don't know how I'd deal with something like that. You must be feeling … slightly crazy.'

‘And stupid. I spent years searching for my birth father.' He lifts his glasses and rubs his eyes. ‘But this is one scenario I never figured on. And the ramifications: Jo's and Ben's son, Liam – who I thought was my cousin – was my brother.'

‘Was?'

‘He died. A long time ago. Here, in fact.' Chris waves his hand towards the ocean. ‘The sea got him when he was five. They never found his body.'

‘Oh … no,' Bertie whispers, shaking her head. ‘It never goes away, a child dying. You always wonder how they'd have turned out, what they'd be doing, what they'd sound like, look like,
be
like. I'm so sorry, Chris. I never knew that. In all our … our time, you never said.'

‘No, well …' He picks at the label on his beer bottle. ‘Things can take a back seat for years and then suddenly rear up. You're right, though – it never goes away.'

‘Have you talked to your … Ben?'

‘Yes, and he's as sorry as can be, but sorry is … it doesn't put things back the way they were. For me, he's a different person. My mother's a different person. Liam's a different person. I'm a different person. All my relationships have to be rewired. It makes me wonder: if I was so blind about this – what else in my life am I not seeing?'

‘Is that why you don't swim – because Liam drowned?'

‘No. Because I nearly drowned.'

‘Oh?'

He looks at her a moment, not intending to say more but suddenly his mouth is off and running. ‘I've never told anybody … what really happened. The only other person who saw it was my grandmother. She's gone now, of course.' Chris pauses. ‘Liam didn't drown. He fell on a piece of glass – a broken bottle sticking out of the sand. It went straight into his chest and killed him. I went after him, turned him over … and then the next thing I knew, I was bowled over by a wave. I nearly drowned. Passed out, and by the time I was conscious again Liam had disappeared. Everyone thought he'd drowned. They never found his body.'

‘But,
Chris
,' Bertie gasps. ‘Why didn't you tell them what you saw?'

‘My grandmother made me promise not to. She said it was kinder to let Jo and Ben think he'd drowned. More peaceful.'

‘Peaceful? I'm not sure about that.'

‘I only know what I saw was terrible. I was eight. I've never forgotten but Gran thought she was doing the right thing. Anyway, that's why I don't swim.'

‘Yet you come to the beach where he died?'

‘Yeah. It wasn't the sea that killed him.' Chris leans on the railing. ‘It nearly got me and I'm wary of it, but I still love being near it; looking out beyond the horizon and knowing that nothing really ends. I have happy memories from before Liam died, and others I've made since.' He turns and smiles at her. ‘I paddle. During my teens my mates tried to get me to swim, but …'

Bertie sips her wine. ‘Do you want to?'

He nods. ‘I think so.'

‘I could teach you if you like.'

Chris tugs at his ear. ‘I … I'm not—'

‘Just a suggestion. You've got enough on your mind right now.'

‘A steaming mess.'

Bertie runs her eyes over his drawings of Fletcher. ‘I know you, Christopher Bright. I know where your heart is. Follow it, and you'll be fine.'

Daybreak.

The sun creeps over the horizon and lingers on the dark water of the rock pool. The bottom is invisible.

I could teach you to swim.

He sits on the edge of the pool and eases his legs into the water, feeling it creep over his calves and the scars on his shin. He slides down into the pool and slowly bends his knees, crouching now … letting the sea claim his waist, his ribcage … He sits, leans back slowly … suddenly the sand beneath him shifts and he's down, under the water, airless. Liam's body is squashing his lungs, panic bubbles in his ears. He claws upwards for the sky, its blue certainty, feet pedalling, arms thrashing – up! Up! Spluttering, spitting, clambering out of the pool, shaking, heart wide open, eyes shut … Breathe, breathe deep.

He opens his mouth.

‘Chris,' his voice says obediently. He leans over the pool and looks down. A wrinkly old merman looks back. A metre of water laughs.

Only 6.30 am but it feels like he's run a marathon.

On the balcony, he struggles to concentrate on the newspaper but Fletcher keeps creeping into his thoughts and onto the margins.

At least you tried. Maybe you could take up her offer to teach you.

He begins to sketch Fletcher in a swimsuit, then changes his mind and draws a knapsack.

Hey, no – get rid of the knapsack; I don't want to go anywhere. I like it here.

As Chris scribbles out the knapsack his mobile starts to ring. He reaches for it, and for the second time this year – though it's not yet March – his world is shattered.

‘It's Judge,' says Diane. ‘He's had a stroke.'

The Rover strains towards Brisbane. Chris rubs a hand over his chin and encounters stubble. He reaches out and pats the knapsack beside him. Flat. He tips it up, shakes out a T-shirt. No phone, no toiletries.

Yesterday. It happened yesterday and she waited all this time to tell him.

‘Why didn't you phone me?'

‘I didn't find out until last night and I couldn't see the point of upsetting you when you couldn't do anything.'

Except be there. Judge is his best friend. Everyone knew except him. On holiday, out of the loop. He can't believe it. Judge doesn't have strokes. He's thin and bony and vigorous.

On the northern outskirts of Brisbane feeder roads from the suburbs slow the traffic to a crawl. Just his luck to hit the city at peak hour. Every traffic light along Lutwyche Road seems to be red but finally the hospital looms.

Emergency. Where is Emergency? He dumps the car in a
No Standing
zone and sprints inside.

Stroke Unit.

Third floor.

Down the corridor at full speed and straight into a one-hundred-kilogram wall. Bosom like the Rock of Gibraltar. Arms a boxer wouldn't argue with.

‘No-one's allowed in,' says the wall, ‘except family.'

‘I'm his best friend.'

‘Sorry.'

‘How is he?'

‘Stable.'

What does that mean – stable? The place where they're keeping him or the fact that he's clinically sane? How
is
he?

‘His wife is with him.'

Chris waits, an hour and five minutes, until Karen comes out.

She holds out her arms and he gathers her in.

‘I can't understand him,' she weeps into his chest. She's small and round and his heart swamps. She presses a tissue to her eyes.

‘Let me buy you coffee,' he says, patting his jeans pocket, then his shirt. ‘Ah, damn. I've left my wallet behind. Could you shout me?'

In the hospital cafeteria she buys him coffee and a sweet bun that sticks in his throat. The stroke happened in the office, just before four yesterday. Judge was talking to Maureen and she couldn't understand him. He tried to put the cap on his pen, reached for his glasses and fell out of the chair. Maureen called an ambulance.

‘We were lucky,' says Karen. ‘They got him to the hospital in time to use some new clot-busting drugs. They have to be given within three hours.'

Chris gropes for a question. He doesn't know what he wants to know; only if Judge will be okay. His friend is lying in a room, changed. This time yesterday that
thing
was lurking in an artery, growing plump and obscene, starving him of the oxygen needed to make his mind and his mouth work in unison.

‘I can't understand him,' Karen says. ‘My own husband.'

For two days, Chris is banned from visiting. He prowls the office, trying to focus on work. He phones Bertie and explains his sudden departure. ‘I left my wallet and some gear in the apartment. If I courier the key, could you collect my things and return the key to the agent?'

‘No problem,' she says. ‘How's your friend?'

‘I haven't been allowed to visit him yet.'

‘How are you doing, Chris?'

‘Okay, I guess. Trying to pick up the reins and sort out the work. Doesn't take long for things to fall behind.'

‘I don't suppose there's anything I can do, but if there is, just let me know. Even if you only want to talk.'

‘Thanks.'

When he's finally allowed to see Judge, he scrambles to the hospital. Karen intercepts him in the corridor, warning him to expect change. Judge had woken from the stroke to find a catheter in his penis and, by the sound of his speech, cotton wool in his mouth.

Chris prepares himself to deliver an optimistic ‘G'day!' but when he sees his friend lolling in a wheelchair, all he can think of is ‘invalid'. He looks like Judge, but rearranged. The left side of his face droops and one hand lies in his lap as if someone else has put it there.