Hill of Grace (41 page)

He left his bottle half empty and went in, locking the door behind him, going into the bedroom and laying on the bed fully clothed, his hands behind his head.

‘Get them things off,' Rose said, keeping her eyes on her book.

‘You don't know what it takes to get grease out.'

He still didn't move, so she looked at him. He met her eyes like a child and said, ‘I got the cancer, Rose.'

She lay down the book and stared at him. ‘What d' you mean?'

‘In me throat.'

‘Jesus . . .'

The night was broken by a group of children squealing somewhere, growing into laughter. Rose stared ahead at a Hans Heysen on the wall, but couldn't think what to say.

‘This doctor reckons it's the fags,' he continued. ‘I told him my dad smoked till he was eighty-six, then had a stroke. He says, “Yes, well, it's like a lottery, isn't it?” Just like that . . . it's like a lottery, you win the cancer.'

Rose couldn't help being Rose. ‘It's just his job.' She cast her mind back over her book and searched for something to say, something Peter would say (
Bob, every man is given a time, and has
to make the most of it
). But it was just a book. Even Phil could, and would, find better words – sincere and heartfelt things. Although when Phil did find out, the thought that would haunt him most was how science, and his books, had let him down, how there wasn't a thing in a thousand volumes of pharmaceuticals to help them.

‘What are they gonna do?' Rose asked.

‘Nothing.'

‘Why?'

He looked up at her. ‘It's right through.'

The coughing was something that dated back twenty years.

Things hadn't turned nasty until about a month before. ‘I was walkin' to work and there it was in me hands, blood. Nathan looks and says, “Jesus,”' as Bob had pretended it was a blood nose. The following day he had gone to see the work's doctor, taking time off for tests and a visit to the Royal Adelaide, watching out for Lavender Ladies who might give him away to Rose. Then back to the doctor, on the second floor of the Webb administration building, surrounded by wood panelling and antiseptic familiar from Rose's tunics.

‘Throat cancer,' the doctor said, as detached as a train conductor. Bob sat back. ‘That's what I thought you'd say. What do they do for cancer?'

‘You want the truth?'

Bob sighed. In those few words he saw his future. He'd had the feeling before, one night on the end of Largs jetty, years before Rose or Phil or the house or anything. Just him and a fella in a six-way coat, saying, ‘You got any money?' And before he could even check, the stranger pulling a knife. All he could remember was looking out to sea, to a cloudy, moon-lit horizon, and thinking, Well, if that's it. Saying, ‘Would you use that thing, if I didn't give you money?'

‘Of course I'd bloody use it. What are you, simple? Give me yer fuckin' money.'

Fishing in his pocket for change and handing over a wallet empty except for a holy card of Our Mother of Perpetual Help he'd been given by his mum. Who'd promised him the glowing figure would watch over him: at home and work, even at the end of Largs jetty, sprinkling a glitter of arc lights like so much burly into the water, uttering blessings and promising to walk with him all the (remaining) days of his life, watching for locos as he crossed tracks, trucks as he crossed Churchill Road but promising nothing, when his number came up.

‘It's not me I care about,' he whispered, still stretched out on the bed. ‘It's you and Phil . . . and Nathan.'

‘Don't talk like that. We'll get you to a proper doctor, not that Railways idiot. Cancer's just like, like a cold. Plenty of people – '

‘Rose.'

In the next room, Phil was telling Nathan about his deep-sea diving at the Semaphore baths; swimming dolphin-like between bodies bulging from Jantzen monochromes, wooden Dixie sticks stirred up in the swell of high divers as somewhere from the surface a voice sang, ‘“Animals crackers in my soup . . .”'

Nathan looked at his friend. ‘You go to all that trouble, and yet you didn't even say hello to anyone?'

‘Miller, there's more to life than a root.' Loudly. ‘A root.'

‘Phil!' Bob called from next door.

‘It's Miller-slash-Muller,' Phil shouted. ‘You oughta hear what he's saying.'

Phil, quietening, whispered across the room, ‘I go to the Art Gallery to look at nudes. Doesn't mean I get up and try to root them.'

Rose had worked out what to do. ‘Lorna, at the League of Health and Beauty, her brother's a doctor.'

‘Rose,' he replied, half singing her name.

She sat up. ‘First thing is – ' ‘Rose, the world is full of doctors, doesn't mean that people don't die.'

Silence. She looked at him. ‘So that's it?'

‘No, it's not like that.'

‘What, twelve months and then – ' ‘More like six.'

Rose was confused. What could you do in six months? Plant a few marigolds, go see the Blue Lake again? If he was right it would all be over before spring. The bulbs would still be cold in the ground, the wading pool and barby packed away for winter, and who'd get them out again, Phil? And what about next Christmas, when she needed someone to steal a pine tree from Kuitpo forest? Still, she couldn't give voice to these thoughts. Things would have to go on, business as usual. Over the next few months, as Bob became sicker and finished work, Phil would accuse her of being in denial. Nonsense, she'd reply, have you put your socks away?

‘Why didn't you tell me earlier?' she asked, whispering.

‘I had to be sure.'

He'd thought about the open confession around the table, or notes full of inadequate, stumbling prose, but in the end there was none of the drama of
A Man Called Peter
. He knew that she'd find a way of telling others, of sustaining them, and in the end, after he was gone, cooking the food and washing the oil stains from the drive that used to be his job. She was practical like that, strapping on her lavender apron and pushing the lolly-trolley through the coronary ward of life. And as if to prove this, she called out, ‘Nathan, Phil,' and pulled the sheet up over her nightie as she waited for them to come in.

It was late when Bob opened his shed and switched on the light. He finished his Ballarat Bitter in a better frame of mind and eventually forgot everything as he got caught up in a confusion of spokes like broken, uncooked spaghetti.

Nathan, falling asleep, wondered if there really was a God after all, if Phil and Lilli weren't right. A God that sustained the worst and crushed the best under his size nine heel. A God caught up in the end of everything as the dutifully lapsed and agnostic worked at sustaining life, feeding families, battling soursobs and succumbing to the cancer. There was no way to look at it that made sense. Maybe God just looked after his own, in which case everything he'd been brought up to believe was bullshit. Suffer the little children. Bullshit. Pray for the aged and infirm, the fallen and diseased. Bullshit. Just let them die and go to Hell.

All at once he felt utterly pessimistic. If the End did come, it wouldn't be soon enough. Talk about people disappointing Jesus. Jesus was the great disappointment.

Phil, meanwhile, sitting opposite Nathan in silence, had never felt more helpless. Words, analysis, sarcasm – even the complete and utter honesty he saved for special occasions. There was nothing you could say. The world was just a giant lump of shit hurtling through space. You just had to get used to it.

The following Friday Bluma dragged a reluctant William to Adelaide, persuading him with an all-Wagner concert by the South Australian Symphony Orchestra, the highlight of which was the Prelude and
Liebestod
from
Tristan and Isolde
. William had heard it a thousand times, maybe more, on Robert's old gramophone, which had since sat unrepaired in the cold cellar for the last twenty years, absorbing the smell of pickled pig and sauerkraut. Every week or so Robert used to fetch it from his study, wind a little handle and put the arm on the Wagner record. When it finished he'd play it again, and again, sometimes describing Isolde's demise as they all listened, imagining the boat tossed on the waves, the fake beards and creaky scenery. All made real around a Tanunda black kitchen.

To William it was the soundtrack of the stories they read in the kitchen, distant and epic, populated by seven-foot Teutons with swords, early Lutherans in search of the infidel. Until one day his mother brushed past and knocked the gramophone off the table, damaging the mechanism and breaking the record in two. Robert had meant to get it repaired, but then died his own love-death, leaving the melody wafting around in William's head. In search of rediscovery at the hands of a
real
orchestra.

They crossed North Terrace from the railway station, carrying overnight bags packed tighter than the Glenelg tram. William stopped the traffic with his hand, motioning for Bluma to cross as he waited. Mercedes and near-new Holdens revved impatiently and he smiled at them, thinking, Your time's coming. Adelaide would be a different place soon: cars driven at safe speeds by drivers who were more than happy to give way; politicians cast out from nearby Parliament House as surplus, attempting to return to jobs in insurance and stockbroking; families stopping to pray on median strips; coppers on point conducting traffic as harmonious as
Tristan
; whitegoods traders punished eternally for obscenely high mark-ups.

They climbed the steps of the South Australian Hotel, William feeling out of his depth, as if he might be walking into the very mouth of Hell. Greeted by Satan in the form of Lewy, the maitre d'hotel, impeccably dressed in suit, spats and polished shoes, his shirt and bowtie as crisp as the day he'd bought them. ‘Good afternoon, Sir, Madam,' he greeted, opening the door and showing them to the front desk, ringing a bell and shouting, ‘Barry,' in a voice which filled the lobby. ‘Hope you enjoy your stay, if there's anything I can do for you, let me know.'

Lewy was far too greasy for William. He could see past the act. This was exactly the sort of thing Jesus would sniff out. No doubt Lewy had a cross around his neck, but he was as much a part of Babylon as the publicans and bookies. Like the lino, the hotel was another compromise, for Bluma, who'd stood by him through the thousand shattered records of his own existence, of marriage and children and powdery mildew on their vines. Unfortunately it was the only reward she understood. Other wives in other times would've expected nothing more than Jesus. ‘Can't we just go up?' he whispered, as they stood in the lobby.

‘Someone'll take our bags,' she smiled, lapping it up like a saucer of milk.

‘I can carry them.'

‘That's putting someone out of a job.'

It had been six years since they'd stayed at a hotel, a trip to town to watch the Pacific Victory celebrations, to show Nathan the stuffed mammoth and mummy at the Museum and Roberts and McCubbin at the Art Gallery, William drifting off into an ecstasy of Titian and Giotto, endless Christs and weeping Marys in photographically perfect oils; Nathan standing beneath a Bruegel, craning his neck to make out the detail in a market-day painting – hundreds of peasants caught up in their own realities as if it were Goat Square. Ale and pigs replacing snow domes and key-holders, travelling players replacing the
Play for the Apocalypse
.

They'd stayed at the Castle Hotel in Edwardstown. William's choice. When Bluma remembered it she shuddered. Gargoyles, monkeys and a life-size St Patrick watching them in the dining room as they ate Shaslik Mexicaine and Entrecote a la Esterhazy and listened to a troupe of Hungarian refugees sing folk songs under an abstract mural by a Japanese artist who'd committed ritual suicide in Tokyo only a few weeks earlier.

This time it was Bluma's choice. Only the best. The South Australian. Settling into their room she eyed the complementary spumante but sighed when William opened it and poured it down the sink. Still, she knew she had to make her own compromises, especially if she wanted her plan to work.

In the form of a meeting with Nathan she'd planned the previous night, sneaking into Arthur's after William was locked away in his study. Ringing the Drummonds and talking to Rose for almost an hour, reassuring her in the best way she could, promising she'd pray for Bob, wishing there was more she could do. Explaining how she'd had aunts and cousins with the same thing, and how you just couldn't work out the whys and wherefores. Rose was cheered, having talked to someone who understood her in the same way she understood others. ‘You'd be perfect for the hospital,' Rose had said. ‘Both of us in lavender, roaming the wards, enjoying a chin-wag.'

Eventually Nathan had come on. ‘I'm getting him to town,' Bluma said. ‘We're coming down tomorrow to see a concert at the Town Hall.'

‘How did you persuade him?'

‘It's that record he broke.'

Nathan shook his head. ‘He only does things if he wants to.'

Bluma looked at Arthur, sitting knitting in a threadbare lounge, and smiled. ‘Let's not start. Now, when should we meet?'

‘He won't want to – ' ‘Leave that to me.'

‘You gotta tell him.'

‘I'll tell him.'

Arthur listened intently, anticipating every twist and turn of the conversation, knowing how Bluma worked and what she was planning. When she got off the phone Arthur said, ‘You sure you want to do it that way?'

‘Don't worry, I know what I'm doing.'

‘It's just, when William sticks his heels in.'

‘Trust me.'

Nathan had returned to the Drummonds, busy playing Monopoly on the lounge-room floor. He'd stood in the hallway and watched them, distantly, and wondered how much longer he could remain a part of their family. He wondered if they ever talked about him, working out ways to tell him it was time to move on. No, unlikely, he thought. They'd given him a new start.