White Dog

20

They let me out on a Friday in early May, round 6 of the football, damp, a wind shaking the bare trees. Drew carried my bag to his car. It wasn’t necessary, but I didn’t want to argue about it.

We drove in silence. He was going the wrong way.

‘What route is this?’ I said. ‘Have they reconfigured the city while I wasn’t looking?’

‘My place,’ said Drew.

‘Mine, I think,’ I said. ‘I have a need for home.’

‘You can’t come out of hospital after umpteen weeks and go back to an empty house,’ he said.

‘Bullshit. Anyway, what do you mean empty? Furniture gone? Haven’t you noticed it’s been empty for fucking years? No one there except me. Take me home.’

I heard the harsh tone of my voice.

We stopped at lights. Drew turned his long face. ‘Jack,’ he said, ‘don’t spoil my plans. Tonight, we have a beer or two. Then we eat these steaks from the main man. With them, a red I’ve been saving for fifteen years. Then we sit in front of the fire with a drop of Rutherglen nectar and watch the footy.’

He coughed. ‘Unfortunately,’ he said, ‘we then see the Saints get their scrawny arses kicked to buggery.’

I looked away, willed myself to be a normal person.

‘Steak?’ I said. ‘Just steak? Is that all?’

‘Good boy,’ said Drew.

I saw relief on his face.

‘With home-cooked thick-cut chips,’ he said.

‘Yes?’

‘Well. Heated at home in the home oven. Defrosted. That’s close, isn’t it?’

‘And the wine? What’s that?’

We pulled away, he jerked his head at me. ‘I can just as easily drop you off at home,’ he said. ‘You appear to me to be fully recovered.’

‘Drive,’ I said. ‘Just drive. It’s what you’re not good at.’

Peter Temple

White Dog (Jack Irish Thriller 4)

Taken home on a Saturday of fleeting sunshine. At the boot factory, at my downstairs door, I said thank you to Drew.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ll come up and see if you’ve got everything you need.’

‘If I need anything, I’ll go out and get it,’ I said.

I set off up the stairs, stopped after the first few, shocked by my weakness, the heaviness of my legs. I looked down. Drew was rubbing his unshaven jaw. I thought I could hear the sawing sound.

‘What?’ I said.

‘You know what,’ he said.

‘Fuck off,’ I said. ‘That’s not going to happen again.’

‘You’re too quiet for my liking.’

‘Well, it’s a good thing I’m not dependent for my state of mind on your liking.’

He shook his head. ‘You and explosions,’ he said. ‘There’s a fearful fucking symmetry.’

‘Thank you for that perceptive observation and goodbye.’ I set off upwards again.

At the top, I had to stand for a minute to recover before I unlocked the door and went in. Everything was as I’d left it on the morning: on the kitchen sink, the glasses, the teapot and cup. The novel was on the kitchen table, place marked with an old window envelope, a bill-carrier.

I washed up, put the spoiled cheese, fruit and vegetables in the bin, switched on the heating, walked around — sitting room, study, spare bedroom, kitchen, sitting room. I looked out of the window at the trees, the park beyond, there were children playing, splodges of colour. I sat down, got up, went back to the window, put my forehead against a cold pane.

I didn’t want to go into the bedroom. I’d left the bed unmade that morning. Her perfume would be on the pillows, the sheets.

Drew offered to get cleaners in, I said no. Why? What stopped me?

A drink, a drink, and then I’d do it. I felt a strong desire for a drink, went to the kitchen and looked in the cabinet. Whisky, a Glenlivet, an unopened bottle. Just the ticket, a whisky, neat. I took down the bottle, found a cut-glass tumbler, also an explosion survivor, now we were both explosion survivors, I didn’t want to think about explosions, poured two fingers, added another two.

I had the glass to my mouth, I had the peaty smell in my nose.

That’s not going to happen again.

Explosions.

You and explosions. There’s a fearful fucking symmetry.

I poured the liquid back into the bottle, spilled a lot, put it away. I went into the bedroom, pulled the sheets off the bed, pulled off the pillowcases, didn’t breathe, stuffed everything into the laundry bag, half full already. I lugged the bag downstairs. But then my energy was spent. I left the bag at the front door, went slowly upstairs, each step an act of will, and I lay down on the sofa and closed my eyes.

When the telephone woke me, it was dark, I had no idea where I was, panic.

‘Are you all right? You sound awful?’

Rosa, the baby my father never saw, named for a Communist heroine.

‘A nap,’ I said. ‘I was asleep.’

‘How could you leave the hospital without telling me? I ring the hospital only to find that you’ve been discharged.’

‘I didn’t know they needed your permission.’

A deep sniff.

‘I trust you’re not doing a line while talking to me,’ I said.

‘I resent that,’ Rosa said. ‘I assumed that, being your sister, I assumed I would be the one.’

‘Which one?’

‘The one to take you home.’

‘It’s just driving, Rosa, it doesn’t have any significance.’

‘Who took you home?’

‘Drew.’

‘I think I might have been told. I wanted you to come here.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? So that I could look after you, that’s why. Is that a bad instinct?’

Standing in the dark, only the weak light from the street-lamp in the window.

‘It’s a good instinct,’ I said. ‘Thank you for having it. Only I don’t need looking after. I’ll be paying for the looking after I’ve had until I die. After I die. So now I’ll just get on with what remains of life. What about lunch, you could shout me lunch? Name the place.’

The silence.

‘Jack,’ she said, ‘I tried to pay the hospital bills. They’d been paid. You owe nothing.’

Tiny branch shadows moved in the corner of the window, twitches of dark little fingers.

‘Some clerical error,’ I said. ‘I appreciate you trying to pay. If you’d succeeded, I’d have repaid you.’

‘What do I have to do to be your sister?’ she said. ‘I think I’ll stop worrying about it.’

‘You don’t have to do anything and you don’t have to worry about it. I’ll drive over your way tomorrow for brunch. You’ll know the top brunch spot, where the Nokia elite gather to chatter. To people elsewhere.’

‘You shouldn’t be driving,’ she said. ‘You’ve had head injuries.’

‘I’m better than before, they say. Reflexes of a teenage Afghani warlord. You should see me collect bananas in Super Monkey Ball.’

‘Bananas?’ A note of caution in her voice. ‘Jack, do you have pills you should take?’

‘These monkeys are inside bubbles and you have to…’

‘So,’ she said. ‘Elevenish. I’ll pick you up. There must be a place over there with edible food.’

Food. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

I wanted someone to bring me food.

No one was going to bring me food. I put on lights and went in search. The pantry needed to take a good hard look at itself, it was a museum of preserved foodstuffs. I found a can of mushroom and leek soup, made in Scotland some time after the union with England.

The freezer too was overdue. Unidentifiable objects. I pulled something from under an ice overhang. Turkish bread. How long did frozen bread remain edible? Halfway edible. We would see.

I started the warming processes, opened a 1989 bottle of Elizabeth semillon, found hiding in the pantry in its grey papier-mache sleeve, the last of a case. I took it to the sitting room. A fire, I needed a fire.

Tomorrow. Do some shopping. Go to Piedemonte. Just buy the necessaries. Then take a walk, there wasn’t anything wrong with my legs. After that, make a fire.

Why did I always say at least one wrong thing to Rosa? She brought out something in me, she turned me into a version of my grandfather, my mother’s father. For him, unqualified approval did not exist, he was unreserved about nothing. I learned early that, even when he smiled at me, I should brace myself. That’s a nice report, John. But I see here…

When I was older, it became clear that he hated the fact that his daughter had married a stonemason, worse, one who belonged to the Communist Party. And I was the result of that union. Ergo.

There was no photograph of my father in the Toorak house until the day of my grandfather’s funeral. After the cemetery, mourners came back and tea and fruitcake and sherry were served, people patted me, kissed my cheek, shook my hand. When everyone had gone, we went into the smaller sitting room. My mother sent me to find a bottle of whisky, that was something new. My mother and grandmother drank a few glasses. I could sense something in the way they talked about the funeral, how well it had gone. They were relieved.

My grandmother left the room and came back with a picture in a silver frame. She put it on the mantelpiece. It was the photograph taken after the civil marriage of William John Irish and my mother. He was in a dark suit, a handsome man and large, black hair disciplined with oil, a head and more taller than my pale and lovely mother, in a cream suit herself, a neckline hinting at bosom.

Where had it been? Had my grandmother kept it hidden, in a drawer?

For Rosa, born after her Commie father was dead, her grandfather was the first male of importance. The infant knew only the Toorak house, sleeping in her mother’s nursery, in her mother’s cot, with her mother’s stuffed animals, cared for eight hours a day by her mother’s nanny. When she was a baby, the old man took her out in the grand pram on Saturdays and Sundays. I had a clear memory of him, in a tweed jacket, leaning into the big-wheeled carriage, his nose pointing, his hand causing chuckling sounds.

‘Gramps was lovely,’ Rosa once said. ‘I miss him so much. Perhaps he never had the chance to bond with you.’

I said, ‘ Bond? What do you understand by bond?’

And in asking this, I knew the rich, thin-lipped old bastard lived on: my mother had bequeathed me his genes. And I knew also that my unease about that fact matched exactly my grandfather’s feelings about the genes of a Communist stonemason in his grandson.

I fetched my supper and sat in the most uncomfortable chair because I wanted to punish myself. I drank a glass of wine, had half a bowl of soup. The soup had aged well, the bread was edible. Had the Turks ever mounted any Polar expeditions?

Tired in the moving parts. Inside too, in the core. I’d stripped the bed, I would have to make it. Not tonight. The spare room, I would sleep in my own spare room, the bed was made. A mug of Milo. No milk, no Milo. Shit.

I brushed my teeth, avoided looking in the mirror, not wanting to see myself. I switched off the heating, the lights, stood at the front window and looked out at the visible universe. Bare branches moving, headlights on the street beyond the parkland.

I was turning back the covers when I thought about putting on the answering machine. It was 9.15 pm. Someone might ring, adults weren’t supposed to be horizontal at 9.15 with the intention of sleeping.

To the sitting room, press the button on the machine, back to the bedroom. A good mattress on the bed, hard. I opened my book, got comfortable on the pillows, drowsy immediately, fought it, a few paragraphs, put the book down, switched off the light, half turned. The blessing of sleep, the laying on of oblivion.

I woke in sweat, heart thudding, dreams vivid, incoherent — fleeing in terror, heavy crippled legs, climbing sheer surfaces that crumbled, ladders with missing rungs, rungs that broke underfoot, the abyss below, pursuers close, gaining.

It was a long time before I fell asleep again, lying in the dark, needles of pain when I moved, feeling sad in the way I’d felt since waking up in hospital, a chronic sadness.

In the morning, I found the keys to the Lark and to Linda’s Alfa inside the front door, pushed through the letter slot. The cars were outside. Cam. The Cam taketh and the Cam returneth. The one person who didn’t come to see me in hospital. Instead, he sent a parcel with half a bottle of Grange Hermitage 1983 in a flat silver flask.

I liked him even more for that.