This Is the Life (10 page)

16

Free Lunch

To get on the Internet, it was necessary to tie a dongle to the end of a bamboo pole and stick it out of the window, for otherwise the reception was none too good. Louis showed me how to do it.

“Louis, why don't you just get cable broadband?”

“It's pricey.”

“Louis, it isn't, not really. And think of the convenience. You wouldn't have to tie a dongle to a bamboo pole and then wave it around outside the window looking for a hotspot.”

“It's no good anyway—we're screwed.”

“Louis, it's a small problem easily fixed.”

“I'm going to lie down.”

So he went to bed. Getting cured is an exhausting business. And hospitals are no places for sick and vulnerable people. And everybody knows that, but no one has devised an alternative.

After some heavy persuading, I got Louis and his debit card to go to the appliance warehouse.

“I still don't see why I need a new washing machine.”

“Louis, it doesn't work. It's twenty-five years old and it sticks on each cycle. It doesn't wash clothes, it massacres them. You put pullovers in there and they come out as balls of wool.”

“And the fridge isn't that bad.”

“It's got diseases in it. And it's rusting through.”

“It's lasted this long.”

“Well, it's come to the end of its useful existence.”

That was a mistake, saying that.

“Anyway,” I hurriedly added, “let's go and look at them.”

Louis chose a fridge/freezer as near as possible in shape and form to the one he had already.

“I want a top-loader washing machine, like the old one.”

The salesman did a deal since Louis was buying two items and threw in free delivery and the removal of the old fridge and old washing machine.

I noticed there was an offer with the washer.

“Louis—you see this? You get a year's supply of detergent, free, when you buy this one.”

“How much is a year's supply?”

“Says twenty-five pounds.”

He looked at me awhile, as if doing slow but accurate mental calculations.

“That's more like twenty years.”

“Well, if you can eke it out that long, so much the better.”

So Louis managed to recollect his PIN and he tapped it in and delivery was promised for Saturday, and so we left.

The machines arrived as promised, but no detergent.

I called the store and queried this.

“No, you need to apply online,” the salesman said. “Go on the manufacturer's website and there's a form there. Just put
in the serial number and date of purchase and they'll send it to you.”

I got the dongle and tied it to the bamboo pole.

“What are you doing?”

“Fishing for the Internet, Louis. What do you think?”

“No detergent then?” he said, with a kind of complacency and a grim-edged satisfaction—the satisfaction of one who has prophesied the worst and has seen it come to pass.

“I'm just going to fill the form in online and it'll be on its way.”

“You know your trouble—you're too gullible,” Louis said. “Credulous and gullible.”

“Louis, it's a bona fide offer.”

“There's no such thing as a free lunch.”

“It's not a free lunch, Louis, it's free detergent. A year's worth.”

“We'll never see it.”

“Louis—why don't you go and have a lie-down?”

“We'll never see it. Not in my lifetime.”

The website said it might take up to six weeks to come. I stayed with Louis for four weeks, and then I had to go home for a time, and then I came back again.

Still no detergent.

“Louis—are you sure it never came while I was away?”

“Not unless they left it outside and someone stole it.”

“Is that likely?”

“Not the neighbors, but some passerby.”

“Wouldn't it be a lot to carry?”

“Some people would steal the hairs up your nose.”

“For what purpose, Louis?”

“I'm just saying.”

The detergent still didn't come. Louis got worse. They
took him back into the oncology ward and from there he went to palliative care, which was a hospice by another name.

“My detergent come?”

“Not yet, Louis, but I'll e-mail them.”

“I said we'd never get it.”

One day Louis was still walking and he was getting visitors and squeezing their hands with bone-breaking handshakes, just to illustrate how strong he still was.

“Be back up and on your feet in no time,” the visitors would tell him.

A couple of days after that he couldn't get out of bed anymore, and then he stopped speaking and all he would do was squeeze your hand softly, and then he stopped even that.

I went back to the house in the morning, for a break from it all and a change of scenery and to see if anything needed doing. I found a card on the mat saying the postman had been, with an item that required a signature and was too large to go through the letter slot, but it could be picked up from the depot.

I drove to the post office with ID and the collection card and there was a big box waiting. It was a year's supply of detergent.

That afternoon I went back to sit with Louis. His hands were cold and his breathing was slow and sighing. A new nurse came in for the afternoon shift.

“How are we doing?”

“His hands seem cold, and kind of clammy.”

“Ah . . .”

She knew more than I did, but even I wasn't that stupid.

At six I went down the road and ate some dinner. I came back and his breathing was even more shallow.

At about nine, I dozed off. I heard the nurses coming in to turn him, but I fell asleep again.

I awoke to silence and darkness. It was half past eleven. I soon realized what the silence was, and why it seemed unusual.

“Louis?” I said. “Louis?”

I went to the bed and touched his arm, then held my hand near his mouth, but felt no breath. I rang the buzzer for the nurse to come. As I sat there waiting for her, I remembered that I hadn't told Louis about his detergent.

“Louis,” I'd meant to say. “You may not believe it, but your detergent turned up. Twelve boxes. I put them in the basement. All ready to go.”

But, as is ever the way with prepared and imagined speeches, it didn't go as it should have done, according to purpose and to plan. And the moment was missed, and the timing was out. There aren't any retakes, though, in life—no chances to replay the scene a little better, in a different and a more satisfactory way. There's only the one shot, the one take, and that's it.

So Louis died not knowing his detergent had turned up. And what, people might cogently argue, did it matter, and what difference did it make, and why was that important in any way at all?

To which questions there are only further questions to act as answers. Namely, what does matter? What does make a difference? What is important? And who is to make the judgment and the call?

I waited until after midnight, then I cycled back to Louis's house on his bike. The highways were empty, there was hardly a car, and the chill night was splendid and clear, with all the stars of the Southern Hemisphere visible above.

I got back to Louis's place and tied the dongle to the pole and hung it out of the window and went online. And in this manner, and by this means, I informed those who knew him, had cared for him, had been acquainted with him, and had loved him, that he was no more.

The twelve boxes of detergent were still down there in the morning. I opened the carton and took out the boxes, and gave them away to the neighbors and to Louis's friends.

I took to riding his bike around the neighborhood, while wearing disreputable shorts and T-shirts with spatters of paint upon them, and I didn't trouble to shave. I traveled his tracks and went to his haunts, and there must have been those who had not heard of his illness, for I swear that as I cycled along a wide-brimmed street and passed a gang of workmen fixing a roof, I heard a voice call, “Hey, how are you, Louis? How are you doing?”

But I had no time to stop, so I just raised my hand in greeting and sped on. I cycled through the park and along by the trees where the fruit bats hung, still smelling fruity and slightly off. I rode past the playing fields with the posts and the teams playing Australian rules football. I rode out past Kangaroo Point, where the personal trainers shepherded their flocks and taught them the moves and the recipes for the dish of fitness, youth, and looks.

I rode on by the river and past the Spiegeltent, which looked tawdry in the daylight, with its sparkling mirrors seeming chipped and only half reflecting. Then I headed for Stones Corner and the Chinese girls, and I went in and got a haircut. And I said, “Do you remember my coming in with my brother? Lots of hair and eyebrows and plenty of beard?”

But they didn't recall.

And then, with trimmed eyebrows and fashionable haircut, I walked a short way down the street and sat at our usual table and I ordered a flat white and a panini from the Malaysian waitress.

When she brought it over, I said, “I feel kind of cold today. I wonder if you could light the burner?”

And she looked at me as if I was crazy, because it was getting on for eighty-five degrees.

“I'm on my own today,” I said. “My brother's not with me. We'd usually both be here, as you might recall. But he couldn't make it today.”

So she lit the burner for me, and I sat there perspiring. I left a decent tip for her, and then cycled on. She turned the burner off, soon as I went. After that, I didn't look back.

I stopped off at the supermarket to get some food, but I didn't buy any strawberries, as they looked kind of pricey.

Then I went back to the house and I sat at the kitchen table, and I made some tea. And that was what I did. It was the only tune I knew how to play.

Into the world we tumble, and we have no choice. We love whom we find—parents, siblings. We must love them somehow or other, and there is nothing we can do. They might not be right for us, or suit our tastes, or be incompatible, or entirely wrong. We might end up hating and resenting them somewhere down the line. But never entirely, rarely without a glimpse of possible forgiveness and reunion. We love whom we must, and then we grow, and love whom we will. But still we're caught, like a fish with a swallowed hook, and we can swim downriver nearly all our lives, but end up getting tugged back to the past, to childhood, to our defenseless selves, and we are reeled in.

17

Ashes

“I need to get rid of the boat. It's probably worth twenty thousand,” Louis said. He was sitting there, looking agitated, with a demand for money in front of him.

“Yeah, maybe. That only trouble is it'll cost forty to ­do up.”

“Still a bargain,” Louis said.

“Why do you need to get rid of it?”

“The mooring fees are due. Five thousand.”

“You've got the money. Why not pay it and keep the boat?”

“I can't keep it—the boat. I can't drive to the harbor anymore. If I'm not fit to drive a car, how can I sail a boat? I can't even manage the bits and pieces.”

“What do you want me to do, Louis?”

“Find a buyer.”

Easier said.

Louis had built a boat himself, then sold it and put the money toward a twenty-six-foot ketch, and he and Kirstin—when she had come along—had sailed it up the east coast
and to the Great Barrier Reef, taking a long and easy six months to do so, there and back.

The photographs showed sunny days and the two of ­them smiling, and the magnets on the rusty fridge saying: ­
Depression—you are not alone
were forgotten. But then they came back, and the old black dog must have been waiting in the kennels, for a few months later Louis was brooding again over past losses and present dissatisfactions, and it was back to the bum jobs and no strawberries. And then he and Kirstin broke up. And I knew why, but wasn't supposed to tell anyone.

* * *

We tried to sell the boat but could find no serious buyers. So Louis decided it was best to cut his losses and to give it away to a good home.

I put an ad online on Gumtree—
Free twenty-six-foot ketch. Needs some work but otherwise sound. Collect.

It is a widely held opinion that too many people in this world want something for nothing. But when you actually try to do that—to give something away, for absolutely nothing—you find that the contention is not based on the facts. People are suspicious of something for nothing. They approach it warily, and kind of sniff at it, and give it a poke, ready to run off as if it might lunge at them.

Or they are choosy. More choosy than if they were actually paying. Were they paying, they might think, “Yeah, it's not a hundred percent, but it's a bargain. Needs some doing up, but so what? I'll take a chance.”

But when it's free, they want to know what the catch is, and what they're letting themselves in for, and they don't trust you much at all.

There were time-wasters and fender-kickers and guys who tapped the mast and said, Hmmm—they'd need to think about it, or check with their wives, or, on second thoughts, they didn't know how to sail a boat anyway and it might be too late in life to learn.

Or they wanted to live on it, or grow marijuana plants in it, or go around the world in it, or escape their troubles in it, or more likely they just wanted something to do to kill a Sunday afternoon. Or they lived two hundred miles away, though they promised to be there on Thursday, and come the Saturday after, you still hadn't heard from them.

Eventually a woman and a man who lived a few miles away said they'd take it, and they came around and we exchanged documents and Louis gave them the keys.

“When we've fixed it up, Louis,” the man taking it said, “you've got a standing invitation to come out in it. Anytime. Just call. Whenever you like. Many times as you like.”

But Louis just looked sad-eyed under his beanie and shook his head and said, “It's your boat now. You do what you want with it, Cliff. It's yours.”

They took the keys and left.

“One less thing to worry about then, Louis,” I said. “You don't have to pay the mooring fees now.”

“I loved that boat,” he said. “Going down to the marina, chewing the fat.”

“When did you last go anywhere in it?”

“Up the coast with Kirstin.”

“That was ten years ago, Louis.”

“A couple of times around the bay since, maybe. I'd be down there every weekend, though, doing the bits and pieces.”

“Which bits and pieces, Louis?”

“The boating ones. Go down, see Hugh—”

“Who's Hugh?”

“Moored next to me. You met him. Irish Hugh.”

“I thought he sounded Welsh.”

“He is.”

“So why's he called Irish?”

“You wouldn't understand,” Louis said. “They're just like that down there. You'd need to have a boat.”

* * *

After the funeral the ashes were delivered to the door. I had to sign for them and show ID. The man who delivered them was still in his dark undertaker's suit and wore a white starched shirt and sober tie.

He left me and Louis together, so I rang Irish Hugh up and said, “Hugh?”

“Louis? Is that you, you cunt?”

“No, Hugh. It's his brother. I'm just using his phone. You were at the service, Hugh. You came to the crematorium. You stood up and said a few words. How could Louis be ringing you up?”

“I forgot. It was his name coming up on my phone.”

“I've got his ashes here, Hugh.”

“Your brother, he was a right cunt. I told him I'd take that boat off his hands and do it up and look after it for him until he got better and then he could have had it back.”

“He didn't get better, Hugh.”

“Didn't know that at the time. And what does he do—he gives it away to bloody strangers. They were down here yesterday, sailing around in Louis's boat like they owned it.”

“They do, Hugh.”

“They looked like cunts to me.”

“Hugh—”

“How are you keeping anyway? You clearing out the house?”

“Trying to. You know his will's gone missing?”

“Surprised he made one.”

“He did and he carried it around in a blue cooler bag with all his bits and pieces.”

“His bits and whats?”

“Pieces. The drugs he had to take and his appointment cards. But it's all gone missing.”

“No will? None at all?”

“There's a copy.”

“You're fine then.”

“Not really. A copy's not legal enough. It might be challenged. The court might say that Louis had destroyed the original—so the copy's no longer valid.”

“I think you might need a lawyer, boyo.”

“I've got one. That's not why I'm calling.”

“It's bloody windy down here. Even the seagulls look seasick. Can you hear all that rigging rattling? It's like the steelworks at Port Talbot back in Wales. Or have they closed them down?”

“Hugh, can you take us all out in your cruiser to scatter the ashes, say next weekend?”

“Who's invited?”

“You and Mrs. Hugh and your son, Hugh, obviously, and maybe his kids, and, say, Louis's friend Halley, and the neighbors, Don and Marion, and Kirstin and me.”

“I can probably fit them on, but that's your limit.”

“The weather going to be good?”

“Sunday? All right in the morning. Get here before it blows up.”

“When?”

“Ten'll do.”

“Thanks, Hugh.”

“I'd have looked after that boat for him and given it back to him, though. I liked your brother Louis, I had a lot of time for him, but he was a cunt.”

“He was fearsomely independent, Hugh, and didn't like being beholden to people.”

“That's just what I'm saying if you'd listen to me—he was a cunt.”

“But you're okay about the ashes?”

“I'd have been offended if you hadn't asked me.”

“Thanks, Hugh.”

“Here—my wife was saying that you're quite a bit like your brother.”

“You mean I'm a cunt as well, do you, Hugh?”

“I'll see you Sunday then, shall I?”

“Thanks, Hugh.”

“You'll bring the ashes with you, will you?”

“No, I'll leave them here.”

“Well, there won't be much point in—”

“Joking, Hugh.”

“Your brother had a peculiar sense of humor as well. But I'd have looked after that boat for him and given it back to him when he got better.”

“He died, Hugh.”

“I know. And I told him he should have gone to the doctor a year ago. He'd sit on that boat of his and stare out to sea for hours on end. Just sit there, staring, until I'd go over and tell him to put the kettle on and we'd have a cup of tea.”

“I'll see you Sunday, then, Hugh.”

“I'll see you Sunday, Louis. And don't forget your ashes.”

“It's not Louis, Hugh, it's his—”

But the phone had gone dead.

I guess there's good and bad in everyone; the trouble is it's usually so stirred in with the blender that you can't separate the one from the other.

Hugh told me once that he was seventy-six years old, though he looked no more than sixty, but he did dye his hair. He told me he never drank and then poured us both a whiskey and he lit a cigarette to go with it. He had done every job there is to do under the sun, apart, maybe, from being a midwife, and even then he might have seen some action at an amateur level.

On the following Sunday, Halley and Kirstin and Marion and Don and I drove down to the marina in two cars and found Irish Hugh, Mrs. Hugh, their son, Hugh, and Hugh's son—surprisingly not called Hugh—waiting on the boat.

We set sail and headed out to the bay. After an hour, younger Hugh, who was steering, cut the engine and threw the anchor out.

“How's this?”

“Perfect,” I said.

The sky was blue, the sun high, the breeze cooling, the clouds few.

I had trouble getting the lid off the canister and had to ask Hugh for a screwdriver so I could pry it up. Then Marion uncorked the bottle of Jägermeister she had brought, and Mrs. Hugh passed around the teacups, and we drank a toast to absent friends.

Then I tipped the ashes over to leeward so that they wouldn't blow back into our faces, and Louis sped away, returning to the elements, becoming part of the vast ocean. It would carry him all around the world. In a year or two
there would be a trace of Louis in all the seas and oceans of the planet.

The Jägermeister bottle was empty, so Hugh broke out the Greek brandy from the first-aid cabinet, so we drank that too, and then Marion passed out on one of the bunks for half an hour. When the brandy was gone, younger Hugh produced an Esky—a cooler—with beer in it.

“Louis would have liked it here,” I said to Hugh the elder.

“Sailed out here many a time,” he said.

“What's the island there?” I asked. “The one nearest ­to us?”

“Old prison island,” Hugh said. “They used to keep convicts there.”

“Convicts?”

“That's right. They sent the convicts to Australia, and when they got here, the ones that were so crooked even the convicts couldn't stand them, they sent them to that island there. Could never swim it to the mainland. The sharks'd get you first.”

“I see. So we have just scattered Louis's ashes offshore from a prison island, once occupied by Australia's worst convicts?”

“He loved it out here, Louis did.”

“Can I have another beer, Hugh?”

“Help yourself, boyo. Let's have a toast—to Louis.”

“To Louis.”

“I loved him. But he was a cunt.”

“Hugh!” his wife rebuked him.

“Sorry, love. No offense.”

Mrs. Hugh had brought flowers, which I had overlooked to bring, and she handed us a few each, and we dropped them into the sea, to follow the ashes on their way.

Soon there was a pageant of drifting blossoms, mixing with the deep blue of the water and the flick of the whitecaps' foam.

“Better get back, Dad,” Hugh the younger said. “Blowing up now a bit, and look at the horizon.”

He hauled in the anchor and we turned back for the marina. Shoals of jellyfish floated alongside, white as the flowers we had thrown.

We tied up at the marina and headed for lunch at Fried Fish.

“Nice to see you again,” the waiter said when we arrived.

“I'll have the usual,” I told him, when he returned to take the order.

“Your brother not here today?” he asked.

* * *

The next day Hugh rang me early.

“Louis? That you?”

“No, Hugh, it's his—”

“Ah, you're the one I want. Not too early for you, is it?”

“Well, it is only half past seven.”

“I'm down here by five every morning.”

“Doing what?”

“Sorting things out.”

“Hugh, what things need sorting out at five in the—?”

“Thing is, I've been sweeping bits of your brother off the deck.”

“Sorry. I tried to make sure that didn't happen.”

“I think there's some of him in the compass.”

“I don't think—I mean, how would he get in there?”

“But it don't matter, boyo. No, the reason I'm calling is you left the canister behind.”

“Yes, I realized. Sorry. I was going to call later when you were up.”

“I am up. Up every morning at four thirty, down here at the marina and on my boat by five. Don't really know why. There's sod-all to do. So I thought I'd give you a ring. You want the canister back?”

“Not particularly. It's only plastic.”

“No sentimental value then?”

“Not really.”

“No, it's not like it was a coat or his trousers or something, is it? Tell you what, I'll put it in the recycling then.”

“Thanks.”

“That was a nice coffin you got him, by the way.”

“It was wicker.”

“He'd have liked that. He always liked alternatives. I'm thinking of having one of those myself. I said to Mary, ‘I'll have a woven one.' ”

“Well, good to talk to you, Hugh, and thanks again.”

“When are you going back?”