Carnival Sky (22 page)

‘COME FOR A WALK,’ said Georgie, as a statement rather than invitation, and dressed just as they were, they drifted out of the house, raising hands to their mother at the window to ensure she realised their intention. The late afternoon breeze moved against them, but it was warm and enveloping. Merely to be walking was some sort of release. For some minutes they took satisfaction in that, and said little.

‘How’s your chin?’ asked Georgie finally. She’d taken a professional interest in it over the days since the injury.

‘Fine. I just have to be careful at night I don’t catch it on the pillow.’

‘It’s scabbed up well. It’s better not to have it covered. Don’t pick at it when it starts to itch.’

‘Dad keeps asking me how I got it, and forgetting what I tell him,’ said Sheff. ‘Jesus, he’s bad today. It’s so cruel I hate to go in to him half the time.’

‘That’s what I want to talk about,’ she said.

‘We’ll have to get him into a hospice or something.’

‘It won’t make any difference,’ said Georgie. ‘He’ll suffer wherever he is. He wants to be at home.’

‘Okay, but Andrew will have to ramp up the morphine, won’t he? Palliative care these days is supposed to be able to deal with anything. He needs to get onto it. The whole bloody thing is savagery.’

‘I could do something,’ said Georgie, so quietly that Sheff found it difficult to hear because of traffic noise reverberating from the walls of the cutting that led down to bridge.

‘What do you mean?’ He found himself attempting to adjust his longer step to that of his sister

‘You know what I mean. I can help him go, but you’d have to agree. I can’t carry it all by myself.’

They were above the water, and stopped walking because of the almost brutal impact of what they considered. Brother and sister standing together on the metal walkway with the sinuous Clutha like a giant jade water snake passing underneath, and the pigeons shuffling in the niches of the old stone bridge supports abandoned close downstream, and talking of taking their father’s life. Nothing in the scene around them reflected the enormity of that. One pale cloud slowly altered form, the steepest slopes had a metallic glint, the willows and poplars along the riverbanks showed no agitation. A ute was parked off the bridge not far ahead of them with the driver still in it. He was using a cell phone, and his bare right arm made a protruding triangle from the window. A very hairy arm, and thin.

Sheff felt a sudden jag within himself, part relief and part grief. Relief that maybe there was a way to free his father from agony and degradation, grief that they need consider it. ‘What about Mum?’

‘No, no, she couldn’t stand it,’ said Georgie, beginning to walk again. ‘It wouldn’t be fair.’ When they were level the ute driver drew his arm in, his call finished, started the engine, and did a U-turn in front of them despite other traffic. He looked at them for a moment as he passed. Perhaps there was something in their postures, or expressions, that hinted at a moment of significance, more likely he was preoccupied with his own life and wondered if they were people he knew. He had long, blond hair drawn back into a pony-tail like a bikie in an American road movie. ‘We couldn’t say anything to her at all,’ said Georgie. ‘Only you and I would know.’

‘Hell, Georgie, you could be for the high jump, your whole career
down the tubes. Nothing much would happen to me. You don’t have to do it for me.’

‘It would be for Dad, but I need you absolutely in agreement. I couldn’t carry it alone for the rest of my life.’

‘Christ, though.’

‘I won’t even consider it unless you’re with me,’ she said, as they approached the shops.

‘I know what Dad wants,’ said Sheff. He could feel tears on his face, but didn’t raise a hand.

‘We put him first, or we put ourselves first. That’s the guts of it.’

‘How would it happen?’

‘You needn’t know about any of that,’ she said, ‘but otherwise it’s likely to drag on. Anyway, you think about it and tell me tonight.’

‘I’ll tell you now. He wants to go,’ Sheff said. ‘If we can help him this last time, then we should.’

‘Okay then. If you’re sure, then it’s settled,’ and she put her hand out to halt him. For a moment he wondered why, then she put her arms around him in a loose hug, and he responded in the same way. It seemed they stood together there in the street for a long time, but there was no awkwardness, and no concern for anyone who might be watching. Just the two of them, united in the decision.

They weren’t ready to return, and walked past the war memorial with its infantryman on top, and through the entrance to Pioneer Park: rose gardens, soaring ponderosa pines and giant cedars, and lesser trees beyond. The artificial surface of the tennis courts was far greener than the grass. A teenage girl sat on a playground swing and talked to her boyfriend. ‘Why should I give a shit,’ she said as they passed. Georgie and Sheff turned into the residential area and began a circuitous way home, down the street with the house that flew the American flag for no reason outwardly apparent, and an open garage stacked with what looked like merry-go-round horses. They couldn’t talk more about their decision for the moment, and no other topic was appropriate.

Sheff realised that he was walking in a slightly unnatural way, rising
a little on his toes as if to match his sister, but it gave some relief, and in an odd way perhaps signalled their togetherness. He was conscious of the few vehicles passing; the sound of their engines was strangely pronounced, and the sky was very still and blue. He had a sense of its fragility, as if at any moment it might shatter and great, blue shards slice down on everything beneath. It came to him that Georgie was stronger than he was, had the means and the courage to be of service to Warwick, and he didn’t. All that was required of him was to acquiesce, and be prepared to live with the knowledge.

As they returned up the path to the house, Belize watched them from the window. She was still, but with a slight smile at seeing son and daughter walking together. ‘Dr North’s been. He’s asleep, thank God,’ she said when they were inside. Georgie stayed to talk with her, but Sheff went through to his father. It was good that Warwick was still and calm, and no conversation necessary, no small spasms of movement to quell. Just the rasp of his breathing.

‘I could do something,’ Georgie had said, and Sheff registered it again with a frisson. Partly it was the dread of shared responsibility, more it was an alternative to crushing helplessness. She could do something: not save their father from death, but release him from the agony of dying. Almost Sheff wished that he, and not Georgie, held the power of that mercy.

As he sat in the sickroom, the spatial essentials, the precise angle and tincture of the low sun through the window and the glimpse of the orchard trees were just as he remembered from his possession of the place as a boy and then almost man. He had a sense again of the great riddle of time: the long line of connected images, some in the past, some in view now, others stacked and awaiting the future. Surely everything must be gathered somewhere, whether for a purpose or not, and be held in a shimmer of eternity.

A few days before Sheff had left for university, his father had come into this room and talked a while about the significance of the opportunity. Sheff had been eager to go, and never thought that for
his parents, too, it marked change, maybe a sense of loss even though Georgie remained with them. ‘Have a good time, but don’t waste time,’ Warwick had said. ‘A lot of posturing goes on, and a lot of boozing. Kids from boarding schools are still the worst, I imagine. They break out after all that confinement and the rules. Get your work done first and you’ll have plenty of time for sport and fun. Steer clear of drugs. Some of the guys I started with just wasted their time and flunked out of everything. Find a purpose for yourself. That’s the thing.’

Sheff couldn’t remember all of that talk, but it was as close to a formal farewell as he’d had with his father, and he was sure it was in the same room. He could recall clearly his father’s grey suit trousers and pale shirt, so it must have been a weekday. Warwick always wore a suit to work. And Sheff recalled him talking about girls: nothing to do with the birds and the bees, but about the suddenness with which responsibility could arrive. ‘Girls get pregnant very easily,’ he’d said, ‘and you can’t walk away from something like that. Don’t be silly with the girls you’re with.’ Sheff had made no answer that might extend his father’s advice on the subject: he was unsure whether the silliness with women lay with shagging them, or not taking precautions when you did. Sheff loved his father, but there was much about him he didn’t know. It’s difficult to understand one’s self; no wonder other people are a mystery. ‘Don’t be silly with the girls you’re with.’ That was exactly what Warwick had said, and it was typical of his reductive form of advice.

What would he have made of Cissy in Charlottesville, Sheff wondered. There were parts of Sheff’s own experience that were as distanced from life as the painted scenes in a gallery, so that he retained the detail as an observer, but no longer had the sense of participation. When on exchange to the Charlottesville paper, he’d been taken by a fellow journalist to Shenandoah National Park. Her name was Cissy Calder and she was court and justice reporter, but wanted to be a writer. There was still snow in the park, and for a while they walked in the forested hills with their collars up, hands in their pockets, and Cissy talked about William Faulkner, Edgar Allan Poe
and John Grisham, who all had links to Charlottesville. Rob Lowe, too, she told him, although he wasn’t a writer of course. Cissy’s body was straight and thin, and her eyebrows were high on her forehead. They came back to her car for warmth and, after talking for a long time, made love in the back seat with their clothes still on.

It was what Sheff had come for, and he had the joy of it. There were no other cars, just the bright garbage cans on stakes, and patches of snow, and the branches a good way off swaying with the wind in a manner that seemed to synchronise with the rhythm of lovers. Afterwards they sat close together for a while, and Cissy said, ‘What was that all about?’ in a tolerant, half-amused sort of way, and on the drive back to Charlottesville she talked more about her work on the paper, and how she hoped journalism would make her writing tighter and more active. It had worked for Hemingway, though Cissy said it was Annie Proulx she really admired.

They were good friends that year in Charlottesville, although they made love less often than he wished. The last time was in Cissy’s small, third-storey apartment after a Thanksgiving Day party, and with her cat reluctant to give up its place on the bed. Without getting up he could see the far-off lights of the university rotunda, crimped by the cold night, and he and Cissy lay drinking cheap bourbon and Coke, and talking about their futures without any embarrassment that neither featured in the aspirations and plans of the other.

Not long after, Cissy came to see him off on the bus to Richmond he took to catch the flight for the first leg of his return home. She took time from her working day, and afterwards she was going to go back to the office. Cissy waited until the bus pulled out, stood waving until it turned the corner. She wore the same thick jacket she had taken to the Shenandoah park, and boots almost to her knees.

He should Google her perhaps, to see if she’d made it as a writer, but if he couldn’t find her there he would imagine her editor of the
Daily Progress,
Charlottesville, Virginia, with a devoted husband and two skinny kids with high eyebrows. He remembered the Shenandoah
trash cans in the snow, the distant lights of the rotunda, the enmity of the long-haired cat that was accustomed to share Cissy’s bed, the quick laugh of the woman who ran the diner next to the newspaper office, the kaleidoscopic movement and colour of the college basketball games, the tornado victims he interviewed in a trailer park – but all as if it had been experienced by someone else.

And in all the time he was in that city, there was no way he could foresee the painful irony its name would have for him. Charlotte. Charlotte. Charlotte. But, ah, Jesus, don’t go there.

When Sheff was almost asleep himself, slumped on the chair by his father’s bed, Warwick awoke with an apnoeic gasp. ‘You okay?’ asked Sheff.

‘Sod off,’ his father said distinctly, and displayed his donkey teeth.

‘Georgie’s going to get you out of this. We’re going to set you free.’

Warwick was looking at him, but seemed as if his focus was far beyond: some place reached only after ordeal, some future, or some past, free of the present. He gave no affirmation, but Sheff had no doubt of his desire. Georgie would kill him because she was loving and merciful, and Warwick and Sheff would be thankful.

HIS FATHER WAS A WHISTLER
until he became sick, especially while driving, but apart from birthdays and perhaps when seeing the new year in, Sheff could remember him singing only once. Sheff and Albie had been sitting behind the fowl house in evening shade, and Warwick came out of the garage and stood by the orchard fence. He was silent for a while and then he began to sing ‘Moon River’. He wasn’t always on key, but he seemed to know all the words, and took care with the phrasing. He even conducted himself with one hand. Sheff and Albie were partly amused and partly embarrassed, and sat still so as not to be noticed. When Warwick had finished and gone inside the house, they gave silly grins, but had nothing to say.