PART TWO OF PRIVATE NOLAN INVESTIGATION.
L: I am tall, tall for my age and quite big built. And I suppose I am all right looking.
D: Anna thinks so.
A: Shut up Dylan. You are very lucky I am so dedicated to accuracy and non-violence.
L: As soon as Les was herded off for his medical I slipped into the queue. Les would go spare if he knew I was joining. When it was my turn, the enrolling officer looks at me hard. He knows I’m only young. He knows I’m underage. He goes to dismiss me as a time waster. “Please sir, please.” I am desperate to join. I don’t know what I will do if he rejects me. He looks at me again, “Name,” he says sharply. And I know I am in, I know he is turning a blind eye. He watches me sign my papers with a slow scribbly hand. I see his eyes flicker with doubt. Perhaps he has made a mistake. I stand up straight and tell him I can ride a horse. I remember Les saying it first time round. I see his eyes light up. He says, “You are a brave lad, son,” and sends me off to the medical examination room. I see Les coming down the hall. I slip off to the side. He walks straight past me. He is elated. He has passed the medical. I watch him go all the way outside and through the dirty window, I see him do a back flip for joy. He turns and turns again. He is looking for me. I smile. I know I will be joining him too. The hard part is done.
J: (Jacqui reads out from the digital archives) 25th of October 1915.
L: Yes, yes … that’s the date.
I catch up with Les and congratulate him. He is over the moon with excitement. We make our way from Francis Street in town, back to Brown Street. We walk down the lane way to the McNamara’s back yard and find Dan sitting on the steps. He is holding a white feather in his hand and is shaking with rage. Someone has put it in an envelope addressed to him and stuck it under the front mat. Dan doesn’t want to go to war. He doesn’t listen to Daisy’s daily updates. He wants to go to Kalgoorlie and find some gold and make some bloody money. He says he is tired of being dirt poor. He is tired of the horses and the smell of manure everywhere. He is leaving next week and he is tired of the bloody lot of us.
I slink home. Dan still doesn’t really like me. He gets jealous that Les and I are mates. None of this matters any more because I am out of here too. We will head to Guildford for training soon and then we will be shipped out. I will keep clear of Les and the whole lot of them until then. Les will get the surprise of his life seeing me in his regiment. It will be too late for him to stop me then.
A: Are you okay?? You have gone from recounting to reliving. It’s like you are here but not here. You’re in 1915!
L: What?
A: You seem weird, are you all right? What about Daisy? Did she know? What did she have to say about it all?
L: What?
A: Daisy the love of your life, remember her?
L: Daisy knew and understood.
A: So what happens when you and Les meet up?
L: He punches me in the head.
A: Of course he does. (WTF!)
A: Why?
L: Leo shrugs.
(Leo stands up and goes back to the wall; he touches the images of Daisy and of Les.)
INTERVIEW PAUSED
“Can’t you get them, can’t you tell them how sorry I am. Please Anna, please?
“I don’t know if I can. Mum couldn’t—”
“You are more powerful, she is scared of her gift and never gives herself over to it. She always blocks it. It feels like she has a damp towel over her head.”
“To stay sane, Leo Dearest. To stay sane,” said Natalie, standing silently in the doorway.
“Sorry,” whispered Leo bleakly as he watched his lower body fade away.
DEATH (AGAIN)
Natalie is leaning against the doorframe, listening to Leo and Anna. She has a baby bottle in one hand and a towelling nappy over her shoulder.
“I am so ashamed Leo, I— ”
There is a loud urgent rapping at the door. She wipes her hands on her apron as she walks down the hall.
She returns with a dishevelled Deepak. He looks at Dylan, who jumps up and knocks the tablet off the table, scattering documents and transcripts everywhere. Anna, Nat and Jacqui follow him outside.
“Dadu?”
“Yes mate, let’s go.”
Nina stands on the front verandah. Dylan rushes into her arms. “Dylan, my darling. Prepare yourself my sweet, Grandfather is leaving us very soon.” Her eyes fill with tears.
“But how can that be, how can that be? On Tuesday I read to him, ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ and he laughed out loud. How can this be? He was fine.”
“He has had another massive stroke and it’s very bad. He has lost consciousness.”
Dylan catches sight of his father in the front seat of the Sportivo. He is blubbing like a baby. His huge frame is shaking as he struggles to keep the wave of regret and pain insidw but large broken sobs find their way out. Dylan runs down the steps and opens the car door. He hugs Arun’s belly and Arun cradles his son’s head.
“Let’s go guys, get in the car Dyl. Come on Mum, we gotta hurry,” Deepak chucks the car into reverse and speeds down the driveway. He hits the brakes suddenly. Dylan jumps out and shouts, “Come with us Anna, we need you!!”
“What! What are you talking about? You don’t need me. What do you need me for?”
“Dad has something he needs to tell Dadu.”
He has only been living with him for eight years, thinks Anna. “I can’t promise anything Dylan.” She remembers the anti climax of Aunty Agnes’ death and thinks about Leo’s request.
“Please get in,” cries Dylan, as he swings open the car door for her.
Arun motions her with his hand to get into the car. She squeezes into the backseat with Nina and Dylan and they speed off to the nursing home.
Anna watches Arun’s shoulders lift and twitch as he strains to keep his grief inside his enormous body.
She sits on a vinyl couch in the foyer of the nursing home and waits for the family. Air freshener fails to mask urine and disinfectant. Fake plastic plants fail to give a homely look. A large competent nurse swishes past Anna. Her white stockings crackle and the air is charged like a poised defibrillator. One old man is pacing up and down the foyer in a state of agitation. He keeps asking her if she has any cigarettes.
“Got a ciggie on you, love?”
“No, sorry.”
He turns the corner and shuffles back to her.
“Could you spare us a fag?”
“I’m sorry sir, I don’t smoke.”
He turns the corner again and shuffles back to her.
“I’ve run out of smokes.”
“I’m sorry sir, I don’t smoke.”
The nurse on the reception desk takes the poor old fellow by the elbow and leads him back to the communal room. No doubt for communal fun thinks Anna grimly. Somewhere in the distance she can hear a woman singing, ‘Knees up Mother Brown.’
The heater is stifling and she begins to feel breathless. She looks up and notices a teenage boy sitting next to her. He is smiling inanely at her. He is deliriously, annoyingly happy and he won’t stop looking at her. She picks up a well-thumbed sports magazine and feigns interest in fly-fishing but it is really difficult to block him out.
“Excuse me.”
She peers over her magazine and expects to see Dylan standing in front of her.
It is the boy sitting next to her talking. He is in her personal space and smells like Garam Marsala and old newspapers. Anna attempts to stand up and go outside. She feels hot and her chest hurts like crazy.
“What are you so happy about turd?” she says under her breath.
“I just died and what a wondrous feeling it was Anna.”
The boy is staring right at her and grinning wildly like he has pulled off the joke of the century. Right before her eyes, he grows dark bushy sculptured sideburns and then a magnifi
cent moustache. Then his hair recedes and rapidly thins all over. It changes from silky black to peppery grey to shiny bald. His skin becomes papery thin and clean-shaven. His mouth is slack and atrophied and his eyes are blind. It is Dadu.
Her mouth opens in surprise.
“You’re as cheeky as Dylan, Mr. Ray!”
“Or is he as cheeky as I?”
“You seem remarkably chipper for a recently deceased person.”
“Well I’m free of my mortal coil. It was getting a little rusty and useless.”
“You’re not looking for a new one are you?”
“I will know my karma soon. If I see the sun, I follow it and need not return again. If I see the moon I must follow its path to another body.”
“Okay,” says Anna dubiously.
“My destiny will be revealed soon but I can’t leave knowing Arun is so terribly upset.”
“I don’t get that. You never spoke to each other but he seems really upset.”
“He is a very emotional and loving boy. He is just fat and lazy.”
“That’s a bit rude, no wonder he gave you the silent treatment for eight years.”
“Yes that is true, he hasn’t spoken to me in nearly a decade. However, he let me live with his family, board free and I was cared for by his own dear Nina, a most excellent cook. Actions speak louder than words, dearest … we almost smoothed out our differences before my stroke … except for one or two things.” He sighed wistfully.
“Why do you think he needs to speak to you now?”
“Oh no my dear girl, it is I who must speak to him.”
A very distraught and hunched Deepak walks out of a curtained room. He is looking for the nurse in charge. He sees Anna sitting down.
“Dadu is sitting right next to me. Go and get your father.” Deepak straightens up and puts his finger through Dadu’s eye and runs off to get Arun.
The old fellow has slipped out of the communal room and is in search again of the elusive cigarette.
“Hello Ron, got a smoke on ya?”
“No, my good man, I quit in 1992.”
“Good for you mate! By the way, you don’t happen to have a cigarette on you?” He feels his dressing gown pockets and shuffles off. He coughs breathlessly. The nurse guides him back to his room to reconnect with his oxygen bottle.
There are others like Mum and me thinks Anna.
Arun walks slowly down the corridor and into the foyer.
Ron’s playful mood vanishes and he stands up and approaches his son.
He turns to Anna and frantically asks her to tell Arun that he is sorry, so very sorry.
“Toder anek kashto dieychhi, I caused you a lot of trouble.
Anek Anaya korechi, I’ve done so much wrong.
Amar jaya toder samman nostho loyechhe, I’ve brought to you dishonour.
Amake khashma koris, please forgive me.”
Arun looks lovingly at Nina who nods encouragingly.
“Ar O katha bolo na. Don’t say that anymore.”
Ron is elated. He twirls Anna around, pinches Dylan on the cheek, slaps Deepak on the back, kisses Nina on the nose and throws his skinny spectral arms around Arun’s thick neck. “I feel lighter,” says Arun, blinking slowly.
Ron turns to the glass doors and deflates. “It is the moon again! What a darn nuisance, yet another lifetime. ‘Oh God, That one might read the book of fate,’ that is Shakespeare you know,” he winks at Anna.
“Yes I know and you are ruining a perfectly good death with your theatrics.”
Does Dylan have any material of his own she wonders?
Chastened, Ranabir Roychowdhury bows humbly at Anna and then vanishes.